temptation in the way of the weak.”
She lifted her blue eyes, saw the glitter in the man’s eyes and went on.
“I’ve told her lots of times that there is danger, but she only laughs. There is an old man who sleeps in the house — quite a feeble old man who has only the use of one arm. Of course, if she cried out, I suppose he would come to her rescue, but then a real burglar wouldn’t let her cry out, would he?” she asked.
The two men looked at one another.
“No,” breathed one.
“Especially as they could get clean away if they were clever,” said Jean, “and it isn’t likely that they would leave her in a condition to betray them, is it?”
Mr. Hoggins cleared his throat.
“It’s not very likely, miss,” he said.
Jean shrugged her shoulders.
“Women do these things, and then they blame the poor man to whom a thousand pounds would be a fortune because he comes and takes it. Personally, I should not like to live at 84, Cavendish Mansions.”
“84, Cavendish Mansions,” murmured Mr. Hoggins absentmindedly.
His last sentence had been one of ten years’ penal servitude. His next sentence would be for life. Nobody knew this better than Jean Briggerland as she went on to talk of the club and of the wonderful work which it was doing.
She dismissed her visitors and went back to her sittingroom. As she turned to go up the stairway her maid intercepted her.
“Mary is in your room, miss,” she said in a low voice.
Jean frowned but made no reply.
The woman who stood awkwardly in the centre of the room awaiting the girl, greeted her with an apologetic smile.
“I’m sorry, miss,” she said, “but I lost my job this morning. That old man spotted me. He’s a split — a detective.”
Jean Briggerland regarded her with an unmoved face save that her beautiful mouth took on the pathetic little droop which had excited the pity of a judge and an army of lawyers.
“When did this happen?” she asked.
“Last night, miss. He came and I got a bit cheeky to him, and he turned on me, the old devil, and told me my real name and that I’d got the job by forging recommendations.”
Jean sat down slowly in the padded Venetian chair before her writing table.
“Jaggs?” she asked.
“Yes, miss.”
“And why didn’t you come here at once?”
“I thought I might be followed, miss.”
The girl bit her lip and nodded.
“You did quite right,” she said, and then after a moment’s reflection, “We shall be in Paris next week. You had better go by the night train and wait for us at the flat.”
She gave the maid some money and after she had gone, sat for an hour before the fire looking into its red depths.
She rose at last a little stiffly, pulled the heavy silken curtain across the windows and switched on the light, and there was a smile on her face that was very beautiful to see. For in that hour came an inspiration.
She sought her father in his study and told him her plan, and he blanched and shivered with the very horror of it.
Chapter XII
Mr. Briggerland, it seemed, had some other object in life than the regeneration of the criminal classes. He was a sociologist — a loose title which covers a great deal of inquisitive investigation into other people’s affairs. Moreover, he had published a book on the subject. His name was on the title page and the book had been reviewed to his credit; though in truth he did no more than suggest the title, the work in question having been carried out by a writer on the subject who, for a consideration, had allowed Mr. Briggerland to adopt the child of his brain.
On a morning when pale yellow sunlight brightened his diningroom, Mr. Briggerland put down his newspaper and looked across the table at his daughter. He had a club in the East End of London and his manager had telephoned that morning sending a somewhat unhappy report.
“Do you remember that man Talmot, my dear?” he asked.
She nodded, and looked up quickly.
“Yes, what about him?”
“He’s in hospital,” said Mr. Briggerland. “I fear that he and Hoggins were engaged in some nefarious plan and that in making an attempt to enter — as, of course, they had no right to enter — a block of flats in Cavendish Place, poor Talmot slipped and fell from the fourth floor windowsill, breaking his leg. Hoggins had to carry him to hospital.”
The girl reached for bacon from the hot plate.
“He should have broken his neck,” she said calmly. “I suppose now the police are making tender inquiries?”
“No, no,” Mr. Briggerland hastened to assure her. “Nobody knows anything about it, not even the — er — fortunate occupant of the flat they were evidently trying to burgle. I only learnt of it because the manager of the club, who gets information of this character, thought I would be interested.”
“Anyway I’m glad they didn’t succeed,” said Jean after a while. “The possibility of their trying rather worried me. The Hoggins type is such a bungler that it was almost certain they would fail.”
It was a curious fact that whilst her father made the most guarded references to all their exploits and clothed them with garments of euphemism, his daughter never attempted any such disguise. The psychologist would find in Mr. Briggerland’s reticence the embryo of a once dominant rectitude, no trace of which remained in his daughter’s moral equipment.
“I have been trying to place this man Jaggs,” she went on with a little puzzled frown, “and he completely baffles me. He arrives every night in a taxicab, sometimes from St. Pancras, sometimes from Euston, sometimes from London Bridge Station.”
“Do you think he is a detective?”
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “If he is, he has been imported from the provinces. He is not a Scotland Yard man. He may, of course, be an old police pensioner, and I have been trying to trace him from that source.”
“It should not be difficult to find out all about him,” said Mr. Briggerland easily. “A man with his afflictions should be pretty well-known.”
He looked at his watch.
“My appointment at Norwood is at eleven o’clock,” he said. He made a little grimace of disgust.
“Would you rather I went?” asked the girl.
Mr. Briggerland would much rather that she had undertaken the disagreeable experience which lay before him, but he dare not confess as much.
“You, my dear? Of course not! I would not allow you to have such an experience. No, no, I don’t mind it a bit.”
Nevertheless, he tossed down two long glasses of brandy before he left.
His car set him down before the iron gates of a squat and ugly stucco building, surrounded by high walls, and the uniformed attendant, having examined his credentials, admitted him. He had to wait a little while before a second attendant arrived to conduct him to the medical superintendent, an elderly man who did not seem overwhelmed with joy at the honour Mr. Briggerland was paying him.
“I’m