She received the smile with which Miss Silver had won not only the confidence but the affection of many clients. It prompted Thomasina to discourse about Peter Brandon.
“Aunt Barbara married his uncle. He is about ten years older than I am. Aunt Barbara wanted me to marry him, but she didn’t put it in her will. He asks me every now and then, but I don’t suppose he really wants me to. You see, he knows all my faults and I know his, and it might be dull not having anything to find out about each other. Of course one would know the worst-”
Miss Silver looked at her kindly.
“There is much to be said for a steady affection as a foundation for marriage.”
Thomasina sighed.
“That is what Aunt Barbara used to say.” She sighed again. “Peter has a very domineering disposition. He writes books, you know. I suppose when you get accustomed to pushing characters about just the way you want to, it makes you think you can do the same thing with real people. Peter is being very domineering about poor Anna. He keeps saying, ‘Let her alone and she will turn up.’ ”
Miss Silver knitted in silence for a moment. Then she said,
“That last letter you spoke of-I should like to see it.”
Thomasina opened her bag.
“Inspector Abbott said you would. It’s very short. Here it is.
A folded sheet was handed over-notepaper with an embossed heading, 5 Lenister Street, S.W., and a telephone number, obviously Mrs. Dugdale’s. Under the heading a few lines in a scrawled downward-sloping hand with no set beginning:
“I shall be out of here by the time you get this, and thank goodness!” Heavy underlining. “How I have borne it! I shan’t tell you about my new job until I get there-no time- all very sudden. I’m sending you a box of things to keep for me in case I don’t stay.
Love,
Anna.”
Miss Silver handed the letter back.
“Have you seen this Mrs. Dugdale, Anna Ball’s late employer?”
Thomasina’s eyes kindled.
“If you can call it seeing!” she said in an indignant voice. “Flat on a sofa in a dressing-gown, with all the blinds down and a bottle of smelling-salts in her hand! And all she would say was, Anna didn’t leave an address and she didn’t know anything about her, and please would I go away, because her head was too bad to talk. And a most frightful prison wardress sort of maid gave me a look and told me to go. Oh, Miss Silver-you will do something about it, won’t you? Inspector Abbott said if anyone could get something out of her, it would be you.”
CHAPTER V
It was by good management and not by mere good fortune that Miss Silver penetrated the defences of 5 Lenister Street in the late afternoon of the following day. As a result of her cases she had acquired a number of useful social contacts. With the information supplied to her by Scotland Yard and a judicious employment of the telephone she arrived at a friend of a friend of Mrs. Dugdale’s. A little kindly pressure, some expressions of regard and gratitude, and the desired introduction had been achieved.
Miss Silver rang the bell, was admitted by a middle-aged maid of a most sedate and respectable appearance, and was by her conducted to a first-floor drawing-room where a single shaded lamp diffused a wan green light. Very depressing-very depressing indeed. And the temperature must be at least seventy. No wonder Mrs. Dugdale was troubled with nerves.
The well-trained maid had murmured her name and vanished. The room being crowded with small gimcrack tables and spidery chairs, there was some danger of being tripped up. Miss Silver’s advance towards a distant sofa was therefore a cautious one.
Arrived, she touched a faint extended hand, and was aware of a smothered growling note from beneath the embroidered coverlet.
“No, Chang!” said Mrs. Dugdale in an exhausted voice. “Do please sit down, Miss Silver. Mother’s Boy is a very, very naughty boy. No, Chang-no!”
The coverlet heaved, the growl passed into a snarl, and the snarl into a furious bark. Mother’s Boy emerged-a tough, belligerent Pekinese with a tawny coat and a black mask from which there glowered a pair of vindictive eyes. Mrs. Dugdale pressed the small electric bell which lay to her hand upon one of the spidery gimcrack tables. Two long rings and a short one produced, not the maid who had admitted Miss Silver, but a severe-looking female whom Miss Silver was able at once to identify as the prison wardress of Thomasina Elliot’s description. Mrs. Dugdale addressed her in a voice which she had perforce to raise in order to compete with Chang, who continued to bark.
“Oh, Postlethwaite, please take him away! My poor head! No, Mother’s Boy! Naughty-naughty! He dislikes strangers so very much.”
Watching the reluctant removal of Chang, Miss Silver reflected that the feeling was probably mutual.
“And oh, Postlethwaite-my smelling-salts. I had them just now, but I don’t seem to see… Oh, thank you-how very kind!” This to Miss Silver who had detected and restored the missing bottle.
But the maid had barely reached the door again when Mrs. Dugdale discovered that her handkerchief had gone astray. There was a search during which Chang made so much noise that even Miss Silver felt inclined to put her hands to her ears. When the door finally closed upon his protests she experienced a good deal of relief. Accustomed by this time to the green twilight, she was able to give her whole attention to Mrs. Dugdale, now lying back in a swooning attitude amongst a great many cushions. She saw a small fair person who had probably been extremely pretty some thirty years ago. There was still a profusion of light hair which had not been allowed to go grey, a pair of rolling blue eyes, and features which might still have been pleasing if it had not been for their fretful expression.
“He is so high-spirited,” said Mrs. Dugdale in a sighing voice. “And so devoted. He will hardly leave me.”
“I believe they are very intelligent.”
“Human,” said Mrs. Dugdale-“positively human. And so handsome-like a little lion. And of course they are as brave as lions too. You have no idea how venturesome he is.”
Miss Silver not only permitted but encouraged several anecdotes in illustration of the charm, the courage, and the fidelity of Chang. Mrs. Dugdale became quite animated as she narrated them, finishing up with,
“And he came in all covered with blood where that horrible cat had scratched him. But his spirit was as high as ever. You could tell when he was thinking about the cat, because his tail curled up and he growled, and he actually bit Postlethwaite when she was washing off the blood. She is devoted to him of course, but she really didn’t quite like it.”
Miss Silver considered that the time had come to introduce the name of Ball. She did so firmly.
“Was Miss Ball attached to him? She was with you for a short time, I believe.”
“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Dugdale. “Attached! She was quite callous! A most unfeeling girl. When she trod on him and he bit her, she was much more upset about the hole in her stocking and the mark of his poor little teeth than about anything else. Why, as I said to her, she might have lamed him for life, my precious boy-treading on his poor little foot with her great clumping one! And she was most rude, most offensive. I had one of my worst headaches after it, and my nerves were upset for days.”