In his capacity of Mr. David Brunger's private secretary, Mr. David Brunger drank from the carafe of water on the mantelpiece to clear his tortured throat.
In his capacity of the great detective and confidential inquiry agent himself, he then stepped to the telephone and, after exhibiting a power of invention relative to startling crimes in hand that won even the admiration of Mr. Issy Jago, announced that he would be with Mr. Marrapit at three o'clock.
“It may be a big job, Issy,” he remarked, relighting the stump of cigarette, “or it may be a little job. But what I say and what I do is, _impress your client. Impress your client,_ Issy. Let that be your maxim through life. And if I catch you again takin' a draw at my cigarette when my back's turned, as I see you just now, I'll damn well turn you inside out and chuck you through that door. So you watch it. You've made this smoke taste 'orrid-'orrid. No sauce, now; no sauce.”
By two o'clock the results of Mr. Marrapit's colossal scheme began to pour in.
The bowls of milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the immediate generalship of Mr. Marrapit.
Throughout the morning cats bounded, flickered and disappeared upon the wall. Fat cats, thin cats; tom cats, tabby cats; white cats, black cats, yellow cats, and grey cats; young cats and old cats. As each appeared, Mr. Marrapit, first expectant then moaning, would wave his assistants to the assault. Up would go the clothes-prop of Mr. Fletcher or Frederick; down would go the stranger cat. It was exhausting work.
At two-thirty the village boys who had been searching were mustered at the gate. Each bore a cat. Some carried two. Leaving his clothes-prop lancers, Mr. Marrapit hurried down the drive to hold review.
“Pass,” he commanded, “in single file before me.”
They passed. “Dolt! Dolt!” groaned Mr. Marrapit, writhing in the bitterness of crushed hope as each cat was held towards him. “Dolt and pumpkin-head! How could that wretched creature be my Rose?”
How, indeed, when at that moment the Rose of Sharon in the ruined hut was lapping milk taken her by George in a lemonade bottle, her infamous captor smoking on the threshold?