With a telling “Hem!” the masterly woman cleared for action. “I will, Mr. Marrapit,” she bowed. She murmured “Rosie, Rosie, ickle Rosie!” The cat Mr. Marrapit had lifted from her lap sprang back to that enticing cushion.
Gently stroking its queenly back, to the soft accompaniment of its majestic purr, in acid-tipped accents she began to speak.
She pointed at the cat that now sat at George's crime-steeped boots. “When I was out this morning I found that cat in a little copse on the Shipley Road. At first I thought it was our darling Rose. Suddenly I heard voices. I did not wish to be seen, because, dear Mr. Marrapit, if it was the Rose I had found, I wanted to bring it to you alone--to be the first to make you happy. So I slipped into a disused hut that stands there. Footsteps approached the door and I went into an inner room.”
Mrs. Major paused; shot a stabbing smile at George.
And now my miserable George realised. Now, visible at last, there rushed upon him, grappled him, strangled him, the sinister something whose presence he had scented on entering the apartment. No sound came from this stricken man. He could not speak, nor move, nor think. Rooted he remained; dully gazed at the thin lips whence poured the flood that engulfed and that was utterly to wreck him.
The masterly woman continued. She indicated the rooted figure in the middle of the room, the collapsed heap upon the sofa's edge. “Those two entered. He had a basket. Oh, what were my feelings when out of it he took our darling Rose!”
For the space of two minutes the masterly woman advertised the emotions she had suffered by burying her face in the Rose's coat; rocking gently.
Emerging, she gulped her agitation; proceeded. “I need not repeat again all the dreadful story I heard, Mr. Marrapit? Surely I need not?”
“You need not,” Mr. Marrapit told her. “You need not.”
With a masterly half-smile, expressive of gratitude through great suffering, Mrs. Major thanked him. “Indeed,” she went on, “I did not hear the whole of it. It was so dreadful, I was so horrified, that I think I fainted. Yes, I fainted. But I heard them discuss how he had stolen the Rose so they might marry on the reward when it was big enough. He had kept the darling till then; now it was her turn to take charge of it--”