BODIE. She plies me with questions about it—not openly—very cunningly. POLICEMAN. Such as—? BODIE. For instance, what would be the punishment for an English person caught hiding aliens in this country? POLICEMAN. If she’s up to games of that kind— BODIE. Does that shed any light on the boxes, do you think? POLICEMAN. She can’t keep them shut up in boxes. BODIE. I don’t know. She is extraordinarily dogged. She knows a number of German words. POLICEMAN. That’s ugly. BODIE. She asked me lately how one could send a letter to Germany without Lord Haig knowing. By the way, do you, by any chance, know anything against a firm of dressmakers called _Celeste et Cie._? POLICEMAN. Celest A. C.? No, but it has a German sound. BODIE. It’s French. POLICEMAN. Might be a blind. BODIE. I think she lives at Celeste’s. Now I looked up Celeste et Cie. in the telephone book, and I find they are in Bond Street. Immensely fashionable. POLICEMAN. She lives in Bond Street? London’s full of romance, sir, to them as knows where to look for it—namely, the police. Is she on the premises? BODIE (_reluctantly_). Sure to be; it isn’t six yet. POLICEMAN (_in his most terrible voice_). Well, leave her to me. BODIE. You mustn’t frighten her. I can’t help liking her. She’s so extraordinarily _homely_ that you can’t be with her many minutes before you begin thinking of your early days. Where were you born, officer? POLICEMAN. I’m from Badgery. BODIE. She’ll make you think of Badgery. POLICEMAN (_frowning_). She had best try no games on me. BODIE. She will have difficulty in answering questions; she is so used to asking them. I never knew a child with such an appetite for information. She doesn’t search for it in books; indeed the only book of mine I can remember ever seeing her read, was a volume of fairy tales. POLICEMAN (_stupidly_). Well, that don’t help us much. What kind of questions? BODIE. Every kind. What is the Censor? Who is Lord _Times_?—she has heard people here talking of that paper and its proprietor, and has mixed them up in the quaintest way; then again—when a tailor measures a gentleman’s legs what does he mean when he says—26, 4—32, 11? What are doctors up to when they tell you to say 99? In finance she has an almost morbid interest in the penny. POLICEMAN. The penny? It’s plain the first thing to find out is whether she’s the slavey she seems to be, or a swell in disguise. BODIE. You won’t find it so easy. POLICEMAN. Excuse me, sir; we have an infall_ay_ble way at Scotland Yard of finding out whether a woman is common or a lady. BODIE (_irritated_). An infallible way. POLICEMAN (_firmly_). Infallayable. BODIE. I should like to know what it is. POLICEMAN. There is nothing against my telling you. (_He settles down to a masterly cross-examination._) Where, sir, does a common female keep her valuables when she carries them about on her person? BODIE. In her pocket, I suppose.