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Page 69
"Alas, my Lady," he replied, "we are coupled together. Scotland
Yard would hardly separate us . . . . you could scarcely manage
to drown me and, keep afloat yourself. Dismiss the notion; it is
from the pit."
There was no virtue in her threat as the woman knew. Already her
mind was on the way that Hecklemeir had ironically suggested - an
elderly relative, with no children, from whom one might borrow, -
she valued the ramifications of her family, running out to the
remote, withered branches of that noble tree. She appraised the
individuals and rejected them.
Finally her searching paused.
There was her father's brother who had gone in for science -
deciding against the army and the church - Professor Bramwell
Winton, the biologist. He lived somewhere toward Covent Garden.
She had not thought of him for years. Occasionally his name
appeared in some note issued by the museum, or a college at
Oxford.
For almost four years she had been relieved of this thought about
one's family. The one "over the water" for whom Hecklemeir had
stolen the Scottish toast to designate, had paid lavishly for
what she could find out.
She had been richly, for these four years, in funds.
The habit was established of dipping her hand into the dish. And
now to find the dish empty appalled her. She could not believe
that it was empty. She had come again, and again to this
apartment above the shops in Regent Street, selected for its
safety of ingress; a modiste and a hairdresser on either side of
a narrow flight of steps.
A carriage could stop here; one could be seen here.
Even on the right, above, at the landing of the flight of steps
Nance Coleen altered evening gowns with the skill of one altering
the plumage of the angels. It must have cost the one "over the
water" a pretty penny to keep this whole establishment running
through four years of war.
She spoke finally.
"Have you a directory of London, Hecklemeir?"
The man had been watching her closely.
"If it is Scotland Yard, my Lady," he said, "you will not require
a direction. I can give you the address. It is on the
Embankment, near . . . "
"Don't be a fool, Hecklemeir," she interrupted, and taking the
book from his hands, she whipped through the pages, got the
address she sought, and went out onto the narrow landing and down
the steps into Regent Street:
She took a hansom.
With some concern she examined the contents of her purse. There
was a guinea, a half crown and some shillings in it - the dust of
the bin. And her profession, as Hecklemeir had said, was ended.
She leaned over, like a man, resting her arms on the closed
doors.
The future looked troublous. Money was the blood current in the
life she knew. It was the vital element. It must be got.
And thus far she had been lucky.
Even in this necessity Bramwell Winton had emerged, when she
could not think of any one. He would not have much. These
scientific creatures never accumulated money, but he would have a
hundred pounds. He had no wife or children to scatter the
shillings of his income.
True these creatures spent a good deal on the absurd rubbish of
their hobbies. But they got money sometimes, not by thrift but
by a sort of chance. Had not one of them, Sir Isaac Martin,
found the lost mines from which the ancient civilization of Syria
drew its supply of copper. And Hector Bartlett, little more than
a mummy in the Museum, had gone one fine day into Asia and dug up
the gold plates that had roofed a temple of the Sun.
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