The Square Emerald quotes

“Being fussed over by Druze. That woman would ogle a dustman! She’s that age.

It is a horrible thing to have been pretty once and to have produced certain reactions. You can never believe that the spirit has evaporated.

”

“Good night, miss,” he said huskily, and she looked at him and shivered. And why Leslie Maughan shivered she did not know, but she had at that moment a vivid and terrifying illusion.

It was as though she were looking into the blank eyes of one who was already dead.

“

A man is never entitled to be sorry for himself in any circumstances,

” she said. “Here is my card.”

“I don’t know; the police cherchezed la femme—forgive my mongrel French—but they never ran her to earth. Peter said it was a chorus-girl from the Paris Opera House. He wasn’t particularly proud of it.”

“Women are hell,” she said profanely.

“Both places,” suggested Mr. Coldwell, and twirled his grey moustache. “Both places!”

“Women are hell,” she said profanely.

“Both places,” suggested Mr. Coldwell, and twirled his grey moustache. “Both places!”

Near the dark entrance of Scotland Yard he stopped.

“

Because I know just why Peter Dawlish is going to kill and whom he is going to kill,

” she said.

She was smiling—a broad smile of conscious triumph.

“Wrong!” she said. “If Druze dies, it will be because he doesn’t love children!”

Mr. Coldwell could only gape at her.

“

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser!

” groaned Coldwell. “You’re probably chasing a boojum. It is the fate of all enthusiastic young officers—not that you’re an officer.”

“You thought I’d been murdered and thrown into the river,” said Leslie good-humouredly. “As you always think if I am not back on the tick.”

“I don’t trust London,” said Lucretia.

It was her real name, chosen by a misguided farm labourer, who, having heard a lecture on the Borgias, delivered at the parish hall, came away with a vague idea that the historical character who bore that name was a worthy creature.

“Exactly.” She nodded. “To one of the colonies.

It is the most popular of all delusions that people without grit or ambition can magically acquire these qualities the moment they go ashore at Quebec or Sydney, or wherever their high spirits lead them.

”

“You’ve got to understand, Lucretia,” she said, “that no woman is properly dressed for dinner unless she feels comfortably nude—don’t faint!”

“Women are not what they was,” said Lucretia severely.

“That’s the devil of it, Lucretia—they are!” said Leslie.

“Women are not what they was,” said Lucretia severely.

“That’s the devil of it, Lucretia⁠—they are!” said Leslie.

She had only half made up her mind as to the course she should pursue. Mr.

Quick as a flash came the answer:

“Before I lose my job, Princess, you will lose a very profitable source of income.”

She did not wait for the answer, but turned to Lady Raytham.

“A gesture of defiance.

Gosh! these respectable people! They dare not leave a room for fear somebody talks behind their backs.

”

She had learnt at Scotland Yard never to interrogate either a prisoner or a possible witness whilst you are on the same level with them. It was a piece of information that had been conveyed to her by the greatest criminal counsel of the Bar.

“Put a witness on a lower level,” he said, “and he’ll tell you the truth.”

Now she looked down at the broken woman who was nervously fingering the arm of the chair, and a wave of pity swept over Leslie Maughan such as she had never experienced before.

Slipping her arm round Jane Raytham’s waist, she took her back to the drawing-room, insisted upon her lying on the couch, propping a pillow under her head, and throwing a heavy silken scarf that drooped on a chair-back over her feet.

“You’re very good,” murmured Lady Raytham, “and I loath you so much.”

“I suppose you do,” smiled Leslie. “And yet you shouldn’t, because I haven’t been at all unpleasant.”

He put his hand on the knob of the door, ready to shut it.

“Arthur, or Anthony, Druze, as he was variously called, was a woman!”

The door slammed on her; before she recovered from her stupor she heard the rattle of the cab as it moved away.

“I’m not knock-kneed, and never was,” protested Lucretia. “Three o’clock, miss? What a time!” She shivered. And then, morbidly curious: “Has anything been up, miss?”

“More things are ‘up’ than will ever come down, I think,” replied Leslie, as she dropped into a chair.

“There’s been a murder.”

The answer took Leslie Maughan’s breath away.

“Because she could not read or write!”

He gave her a quick sidelong glance.

“Minnow fishing never did appeal to me,” he drawled.

“Especially while one of the big pikes are hovering around, and it’s the pike I’m after. And if this minnow doesn’t lead me to him, I’ll be astonished.”

“I have booked your passage,” she said, with an air of finality.

“Then there will be a vacant bed going cheap on the Atlantic Ocean!” replied Peter with a half-smile.

She looked round the room contemptuously, and again her eyes went to the table.

There was a whispered colloquy in the passage, the chink of money, or, more rarely, the rustle of Treasury notes, and they went out again—without their parcels. This, Peter had seen and had not seen.

Prison had taught him the wisdom of blindness,

and he had not spoken to Mrs. Inglethorne of the furtive men and women who came slinking down Severall Street at those hours when the police patrol was well out of the way.

With a table-knife borrowed from the kitchen she forced back the catch and pulled open the door. There was nothing very much there, but enough. Three bolts of silk, one still bearing the label of the wholesaler from whom it had been stolen.

“Thieves in a hurry are very careless,” she said, with the light of battle in her eyes

; “and it really doesn’t matter whether Mrs. Inglethorne is hanged for a sheep or a lamb, so long as she’s well and truly hanged!”

“Didn’t even see him,” said Coldwell bitterly, when he called the girl in from Lucretia’s room. The detective’s face was scratched, his collar torn.

“It was rather like tackling a young tiger.”

Leslie had turned on the lights and they saw the extent of the damage. He must have dived for the lower sash head first, for the upper window was untouched.

“I thought he’d come back through the window,” he mused. “That’s one of the curiosities of human nature, Leslie; jot it down in your notebook.

We always look under things for hidden criminals⁠—we never look over;

and yet the cleverest fellow that ever got away from the police was a steeplejack who hid for a fortnight at the top of a smoke stack. Ever wear garters, Leslie?”

“

I don’t understand women either. I wish I’d kept him and had faced all the trouble that would have followed.

You know about it for the first time, Peter, and you have the support of your righteousness. It has been a bad dream for me—an eight-year-long discomfort. And now it is a nightmare.” She pressed her throbbing temples. “I can’t sleep for thinking of him.

“Have I? I suppose I have.” She saw him, a blurred figure, through a mist of tears. “I suppose I have.

And one pays dearer for weakness than for wickedness, I think.

Where are you going?”

The reflection of the hall light on her monocle produced an eerie illusion.

It was as though she was glaring at him with one malignant, golden eye.

“What do you want?” she repeated. “If it’s money, you can’t have it. This is not a charitable institution or a home for convicts.”

She had been allowed to get up that afternoon, and found that she could drag herself from room to room without pain or inconvenience. Mrs. Hobbs had gone home, having a husband of her own to serve, and Greta was left alone, and was glad.

Face-saving is a practice which is not wholly Chinese.

When she prepared her mean little snacks she liked to be by herself, for she was one of those who desire to be thought well of by the least accountable of people.

She heard the weary sigh of the operator.

“Is Scotland Yard blessed with a number?” she asked.

Greta hung up the phone and looked round in search of the directory. But apparently Scotland Yard had no number, nor did there seem to be such a place on the face of the earth.

Very definite, but the repetition of the phrase amused her mildly.

“You’re rather monotonous, aren’t you?” she asked. “And after I get into the carriage, what happens?”

There was a pause while he took this in.

But they had looked only for articles of value which she might have purchased: lengths of cloth and silk (she specialized in this trade), and they were not particularly concerned about Elizabeth.

Nobody cared very much about Elizabeth, except Leslie and he.

This thought occurred to him as he walked to and fro—and thought breeds thought. Might he not, searching with another object, discover what they had overlooked—one fragment of a clue that would bring him to the child? Why should he be concerned?

Pinned to the shoes was a scrap of paper on which was written in an illiterate hand the words: “Mrs. Larse boy, 10 days old, measles 9 months.” Here then was the beginning and end of Mrs. Larse’s boy.

“Measles 9 months” was his epitaph.

She was a baby farmer; he had guessed that. He opened another bundle hopefully. Somewhere here would be a reference to Elizabeth. The second package had nothing but a coarse calico robe and a penned inscription:

“Whether you’re Princess Bellini or Annie Druze or Alice Druze is a matter of supreme indifference to me,” said Coldwell, as he caught her wrist.

“But you have the distinction of being the first woman I’ve ever handcuffed.”

He snapped the cold circle about her wrist.

He snapped the cold circle about her wrist.

“But then, you see, most of the ladies I’ve pinched have been gentle little souls who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

She made no reply. That old look had come into her face again which Leslie had seen before.