"I've got it," said Wigg, "at my fingers' ends."
"But what are you going to do now?" asked Constable Wigg.
"To find the cat," replied Constable Nightingale.
"Going to take it up?" This, with a fine touch of sarcasm.
"No, Wigg," said Constable Nightingale, speaking very seriously. "I want to make sure where it got that red color from, because, not to put too fine a point on it, it's blood."
Mrs. Middlemore uttered a stifled scream, and clapped her hands on her hips.
"That," continued Constable Nightingale, in a tone of severity to his brother constable, "is what I had in my mind and you didn't have in yours. Why, if you look with only half an eye at them stains on the floor, you can't mistake 'em."
"Oh, dear, oh, dear," moaned Mrs. Middlemore, "we shall all be murdered in our beds?"
"Nothing of the sort, my dear," said Constable Nightingale; "we'll look after you. Pull yourself together, there's a good soul, and answer me one or two questions. I know that Mr. Felix comes home late sometimes."
"And that, as well as being generous with his money, he likes his pleasures. Now, are you sure he was at home when you went out for your beer?"
"And that he did not go out before you come back?"
"Of course. A stupid question. But, at all events, he ain't the sort of man to go out in such a storm as this?"
"Not 'im. He's too fond of his comforts."
"Does he ever ring for you in the middle of the night--at such a time as this, for instance?"
"Has he ever been took ill in the night, and rung you up?"
"Do you ever go up to his room without being summoned?"
"It's more than I dare. I should lose the best customer I ever had in my life. He made things as clear as can be when he first come into the 'ouse. 'Never,' he ses to me, 'under any circumstances whatever, let me see you going upstairs to my rooms unless I call you. Never let me ketch you prying about. If I do, you shall 'ear of it in a way you won't like.'"
Constable Nightingale was silent a few moments, and then he said, briskly, "Let's us go and hunt up that cat."
But although they searched the basement through they could not find it.
"Perhaps," suggested Constable Wigg, "it got out of the house when we opened the street-door just now."
"Perhaps," assented Constable Nightingale, laconically.