“Ho!” said the policeman.
“But, dash it, it was there the night before last.”
“Ho!” he said again. “Ho! Ho!” As if he were starting a drinking-chorus in a comic opera, confound him.
Then I got what amounted to the brainwave of a lifetime.
“Who dusts these things?” I said, turning on the parlourmaid.
“I don’t.”
“I didn’t say you did. I said who did.”
“Mary. The housemaid, of course.”
“Exactly. As I suspected. As I foresaw. Mary, officer, is notoriously the worst smasher in London. There have been complaints about her on all sides. You see what has happened? The wretched girl has broken the glass of my photograph and, not being willing to come forward and admit it in an honest, manly way, has taken the thing off and concealed it somewhere.”
“Ho!” said the policeman, still working through the drinking-chorus.
“Well, ask her. Go down and ask her.”
“You go down and ask her,” said the policeman to the parlourmaid. “If it’s going to make him any happier.”
The parlourmaid left the room, casting a pestilential glance at me over her shoulder as she went. I’m not sure she didn’t say “Ho!” too. And then there was a bit of a lull. The policeman took up a position with a large beefy back against the door, and I wandered to and fro and hither and yonder.