“You can come here immediately?”

“Sure.  Got parlour-maid rig round at m’ boarding-house round corner.  Come back with it ’n ten minutes.  Same dress I used when I w’s working on th’ Marling D’vorce case.  D’jer know th’ Marlings?  Idle rich!  Bound t’ get ’nto trouble.  I fixed ’m.  Well, g’bye.  Mus’ be going.  No time t’ waste.”

Mrs. Pett leaned back faintly in her chair.  She felt overcome.

Downstairs, on her way out, Miss Trimble had paused in the hall to inspect a fine statue which stood at the foot of the stairs.  It was a noble work of art, but it seemed to displease her.  She snorted.

“Idle rich!” she muttered scornfully.  “Brrh!”

The portly form of Mr. Crocker loomed up from the direction of the back stairs.  She fixed her left eye on him piercingly.  Mr. Crocker met it, and quailed.  He had that consciousness of guilt which philosophers tell is the worst drawback to crime.  Why this woman’s gaze should disturb him so thoroughly, he could not have said.  She was a perfect stranger to him.  She could know nothing about him.  Yet he quailed.

“Say,” said Miss Trimble.  “I’m c’ming here ’s parlour-maid.”

“Oh, ah?” said Mr. Crocker, feebly.

“Grrrh!” observed Miss Trimble, and departed.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE VOICE PROM THE PAST

The library, whither Jimmy had made his way after leaving Mrs. Pett, was a large room on the ground floor, looking out on the street which ran parallel to the south side of the house.  It had French windows, opening onto a strip of lawn which ended in a high stone wall with a small gate in it, the general effect of these things being to create a resemblance to a country house rather than to one in the centre of the city.  Mr. Pett’s town residence was full of these surprises.

In one corner of the room a massive safe had been let into the wall, striking a note of incongruity, for the remainder of the wall-space was completely covered with volumes of all sorts and sizes, which filled the shelves and overflowed into a small gallery, reached by a short flight of stairs and running along the north side of the room over the door.

Jimmy cast a glance at the safe, behind the steel doors of which he presumed the test-tube of Partridgite which Willie had carried from the luncheon-table lay hid:  then transferred his attention to the shelves.  A cursory inspection of these revealed nothing which gave promise of whiling away entertainingly the moments which must elapse before the return of Ann.  Jimmy’s tastes in literature lay in the direction of the lighter kind of modern fiction, and Mr. Pett did not appear to possess a single volume that had been written later than the eighteenth century—­and mostly poetry at that.  He turned to the writing-desk near the window, on which he had caught sight of a standing shelf full of books of a more modern aspect.  He picked one up at random and opened it.