CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

four pounds ten now.”

      “Four pounds ten per week?” Mrs. Barnes exclaimed, laying down her knife and fork.

      “Certainly,” Mr. Fitzgerald answered. “After Christmas, I have some reason to believe that it may be five pounds.”

      Mr. Barnes whistled softly, and looked at the young man with a new respect.

      “I told you that—Mr.—that Spencer was doing pretty well, Mother,” Maud simpered, looking down at her plate.

      “Any one to support?” her father asked, transferring a pickle from the fork to his mouth.

      “No one,” Mr. Fitzgerald answered. “In fact, I may say that I have some small expectations. I haven’t done badly, either, out of the few investments I have made from time to time.”

      “Saved a bit of money, eh?” Mr. Barnes enquired genially.

      “I have a matter of four hundred pounds put by,” Mr. Fitzgerald admitted modestly, “besides a few sticks of furniture. I never cared much about lodging-house things, so I furnished a couple of rooms myself some time ago.”

      Mrs. Barnes rose slowly to her feet.

      “You are quite sure you won’t have a small piece more of beef?” she enquired anxiously.

      “Just a morsel?” Mr. Barnes asked, tapping the joint insinuatingly with his carving knife.

      “No, I thank you!” Mr. Fitzgerald declared firmly. “I have done excellently.”

      “Then if you will put the joint on the sideboard, Adolphus,” Mrs. Barnes directed, “Maud and I will change the plates. We always let the girl go out on Sundays, Mr. Fitzgerald,” she explained, turning to their guest. “It’s very awkward, of course, but they seem to expect it.”

      “Quite natural, I’m sure,” Mr. Fitzgerald murmured, watching Maud’s light movements with admiring eyes. “I like to see ladies interested in domestic work.”

      “There’s one thing I will say for Maud,” her proud mother declared, plumping down a dish of jelly upon the table, “she does know what’s what in keeping house, and even if she hasn’t to scrape and save as I did when David and I were first married, economy is a great thing when you’re young. I have always said so, and I stick to it.”

      “Quite right, Mother,” Mr. Barnes declared.

      “If instead of sitting there,” Mrs. Barnes continued in high good humour, “you were to get a bottle of that port wine out of the cellarette, we might drink Mr. Fitzgerald’s health, being as it’s his first visit.”

      Mr. Barnes rose to his feet with alacrity. “For a woman with sound ideas,” he declared, “commend me to your mother!”

      Maud, having finished her duties, resumed her place by the side of the guest of the evening. Their hands met under the tablecloth for a moment. To the girl, the pleasure of such a proceeding was natural enough, but Fitzgerald asked himself for the fiftieth time why on earth he, who, notwithstanding his present modest exterior, was a young man of some experience, should from such primitive love-making derive a rapture which nothing else in life afforded him. He was, at that moment, content with his future,—a future which he had absolutely and finally decided upon. He was content with his father-in-law and his mother-in-law, with Daisy Villa, and the prospect of a Daisy Villa for himself,—content, even, with Adolphus! But for Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, these things were not to be! The awakening was even then at hand.

      The dining room of Daisy Villa fronted the street, and was removed from it only a few feet. Consequently, the footsteps of passers-by upon the flagged pavement were clearly distinguishable. It was just at the moment when Mrs. Barnes was inserting a few fresh almonds into a somewhat precarious tipsy cake, and Mr. Barnes was engaged with the decanting of the port, that two pairs of footsteps, considerably heavier than those of the ordinary promenader, paused outside and finally stopped. The gate creaked. Mr. Barnes looked up.

      “Hullo!” he exclaimed. “What’s that? Visitors?”

      They all listened. The front-door bell rang. Adolphus, in response to a gesture from his mother, rose sulkily to his feet.

      “Job I hate!” he muttered as he left the room.

      The rest of the family, full of the small curiosity of people of their class, were intent upon listening for voices outside. The demeanour of Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, therefore, escaped their notice. It is doubtful, in any case, whether their perceptions would have been sufficiently keen to have enabled them to trace the workings of emotion in the countenance of a person so magnificently endowed by Providence with the art of subterfuge. Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald seemed simply to have stiffened in acute and earnest attention. It was only for a moment that he hesitated. His unfailing inspiration told him the truth!

      His course of action was simple,—he rose to his feet and strolled to the window.

      “Some people who have lost their way in the fog, perhaps,” he remarked. “What a night!”

      He laid his hand upon the sash—simultaneously there was a rush of cold air into the room, a half-angry, half-frightened exclamation from Adolphus in the passage, a scream from Miss Maud—and no Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald! No one had time to be more than blankly astonished. The door was opened, and a police inspector, in very nice dark braided uniform and a peaked cap, stood in the doorway.

      Mr. Barnes dropped the port, and Mrs. Barnes, emulating her daughter’s example, screamed. The inspector, as though conscious of the draught, moved rapidly toward the window.

      “You had a visitor here, Mr. Barnes,” he said quickly—“a Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald. Where is he?”

      There was no one who could answer! Mr. Barnes was speechless between the shock of the spilt port and the appearance of a couple of uniformed policemen in his dining room. John Dory, the detective, he knew well enough in his private capacity, but in his uniform, and attended by policemen, he presented a new and startling appearance! Mrs. Barnes was in hysterics, and Maud was gazing like a creature turned to stone at the open window, through which little puffs of fog were already drifting into the room. Adolphus, with an air of bewilderment, was standing with his mouth and eyes wider open than they had ever been in his life. And as for the honoured guest of these admirable inhabitants of Daisy Villa, there was not the slightest doubt but that Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald had disappeared through the window!

      Fitzgerald’s expedition was nearly at an end. Soon he paused, crossed the road to a block of flats, ascended to the eighth floor by an automatic lift, and rang the bell at a door which bore simply the number II. A trim parlourmaid opened it after a few minutes’ delay.

      “Is Miss Emerson at home?” he asked.

      “Miss Emerson is in,” the maid admitted, with some hesitation, “but I am not sure that she will see any one to-night.”

      “I have a message for her,” Fitzgerald said.

      “Will you give me your name, sir, please?” the maid asked.

      An inner door was suddenly opened. A slim girl, looking taller than she really was by reason of the rug upon which she stood, looked out into the hall—a girl with masses of brown hair loosely coiled on her head, with pale face and strange eyes. She opened her lips as though to call to her visitor by name, and as suddenly closed them again. There was not much expression in her face, but there was enough to show that his visit was not unwelcome.

      “You!” she exclaimed. “Come in! Please come in at once!”

      Fitzgerald obeyed the invitation of the girl whom he had come to visit. She had retreated a little into the room, but the door was no sooner closed than she held out her hands.

      “Peter!” she exclaimed. “Peter, you have come to me at last!”

      Her lips were a little parted; her eyes were bright