BRITISH MYSTERIES - Fergus Hume Collection: 21 Thriller Novels in One Volume. Fergus Hume

face was seamed and lined with innumerable wrinkles, clearly defined by the dirt which was in them; bushy grey eyebrows, drawn frowningly over two piercing black eyes, whose light was undimmed by age; a hook nose, like the beak of a bird of prey, and a thin-lipped mouth devoid of teeth. Her hair was very luxurious and almost white, and was tied up in a great bunch by a greasy bit of black ribbon. As to her chin, Calton, when he saw it wagging to and fro, involuntarily quoted Macbeth’s lines—

      “Ye should be women,

       And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

       That ye are so.”

      She was no bad representative of the weird sisters.

      As they entered she eyed them viciously, demanding,

      “What the blazes they wanted.”

      “Want your booze,” cried the child, with an elfish laugh, as she shook back her tangled hair.

      “Get out, you whelp,” croaked the old hag, shaking one skinny fist at her, “or I’ll tear yer ‘eart out.”

      “Yes, she can go.” said Kilsip, nodding to the girl, “and you can clear, too,” he added, sharply, turning to the young man, who stood still holding the door open.

      At first he seemed inclined to dispute the detective’s order, but ultimately obeyed him, muttering, as he went out, something about “the blooming cheek of showin’ swells cove’s cribs.” The child followed him out, her exit being accelerated by Mother Guttersnipe, who, with a rapidity only attained by long practice, seized the shoe from one of her feet, and flung it at the head of the rapidly retreating girl.

      “Wait till I ketches yer, Lizer,” she shrieked, with a volley of oaths, “I’ll break yer ‘ead for ye!”

      Lizer responded with a shrill laugh of disdain, and vanished through the shaky door, which she closed after her.

      When she had disappeared Mother Guttersnipe took a drink from the broken cup, and, gathering all her greasy cards together in a business-like way, looked insinuatingly at Calton, with a suggestive leer.

      “It’s the future ye want unveiled, dearie?” she croaked, rapidly shuffling the cards; “an’ old mother ‘ull tell—”

      “No she won’t,” interrupted the detective, sharply. “I’ve come on business.”

      The old woman started at this, and looked keenly at him from under her bushy eyebrows.

      “What ‘av the boys been up to now?” she asked, harshly. “There ain’t no swag ‘ere this time.”

      Just then the sick woman, who had been restlessly tossing on the bed, commenced singing a snatch of the quaint old ballad of “Barbara Allen”—

      “Oh, mither, mither, mak’ my bed,

       An’ mak’ it saft an’ narrow;

       Since my true love died for me to-day

       I’ll die for him to-morrow.”

      “Shut up, cuss you!” yelled Mother Guttersnipe, viciously, “or I’ll knock yer bloomin’ ‘ead orf,” and she seized the square bottle as if to carry out her threat; but, altering her mind, she poured some of its contents into the cup, and drank it off with avidity.

      “The woman seems ill,” said Calton, casting a shuddering glance at the stretcher.

      “So she are,” growled Mother Guttersnipe, angrily. “She ought to be in Yarrer Bend, she ought, instead of stoppin’ ‘ere an’ singin’ them beastly things, which makes my blood run cold. Just ‘ear ‘er,” she said, viciously, as the sick woman broke out once more—

      “Oh, little did my mither think,

       When first she cradled me,

       I’d die sa far away fra home,

       Upon the gallows tree.”

      “Yah!” said the old woman, hastily, drinking some more gin out of the cup. “She’s allays a-talkin’ of dyin’ an’ gallers, as if they were nice things to jawr about.”

      “Who was that woman who died here three or four weeks ago?” asked Kilsip, sharply.

      “‘Ow should I know?” retorted Mother Guttersnipe, sullenly. “I didn’t kill ‘er, did I? It were the brandy she drank; she was allays drinkin’, cuss her.”

      “Do you remember the night she died?”

      “No, I don’t,” answered the beldame, frankly. “I were drunk—blind, bloomin’, blazin’ drunk—s’elp me.”

      “You’re always drunk,” said Kilsip.

      “What if I am?” snarled the woman, seizing her bottle. “You don’t pay fur it. Yes, I’m drunk. I’m allays drunk. I was drunk last night, an’ the night before, an’ I’m a-goin’ to git drunk to-night”—with an impressive look at the bottle—“an’ to-morrow night, an’ I’ll keep it up till I’m rottin’ in the grave.”

      Calton shuddered, so full of hatred and suppressed malignity was her voice, but the detective merely shrugged his shoulders.

      “More fool you,” he said, briefly. “Come now, on the night the ‘Queen,’ as you call her, died, there was a gentleman came to see her?”

      “So she said,” retorted Mother Guttersnipe; “but, lor, I dunno anythin’, I were drunk.”

      “Who said—the ‘Queen?’”

      “No, my gran’darter, Sal. The ‘Queen,’ sent ‘er to fetch the toff to see ‘er cut ‘er lucky. Wanted ‘im to look at ‘is work, I s’pose, cuss ‘im; and Sal prigged some paper from my box,” she shrieked, indignantly; “prigged it w’en I were too drunk to stop ‘er?”

      The detective glanced at Calton, who nodded to him with a gratified expression on his face. They were right as to the paper having been stolen from the Villa at Toorak.

      “You did not see the gentleman who came?” said Kilsip, turning again to the old hag.

      “Not I, cuss you,” she retorted, politely. “‘E came about ‘arf-past one in the morning, an’ you don’t expects we can stop up all night, do ye?”

      “Half-past one o’clock,” repeated Calton, quickly. “The very time. Is this true?”

      “Wish I may die if it ain’t,” said Mother Guttersnipe, graciously. “My gran’darter Sal kin tell ye.”

      “Where is she?” asked Kilsip, sharply.

      At this the old woman threw back her head, and howled dismay.

      “She’s ‘ooked it,” she wailed, drumming on the ground with her feet. “Gon’ an’ left ‘er pore old gran’ an’ joined the Army, cuss ‘em, a-comin’ round an’ a-spilin’ business.”

      Here the woman on the bed broke out again—

      “Since the flowers o’ the forest are a’ wed awa.”

      “‘Old yer jawr,” yelled Mother Guttersnipe, rising, and making a dart at the bed. “I’ll choke the life out ye, s’elp me. D’y want me to murder ye, singin’ ‘em funeral things?”

      Meanwhile the detective was talking rapidly to Mr. Calton.

      “The only person who can prove Mr. Fitzgerald was here between one and two o’clock,” he said, quickly, “is Sal Rawlins, as everyone else seems to have been drunk or asleep. As she has joined the Salvation Army, I’ll go to the barracks the first thing in the morning and look for her.”

      “I hope you’ll find her,” answered Calton, drawing a long breath. “A man’s life hangs on her evidence.”

      They turned