A certain degree of intimacy followed the loan of those curling-tongs. Miss Campbell, reserved and demure, greatly sympathised with the lady who was not on the best of terms with the police. I kept steadily in the background. The two ladies did not visit each other’s rooms, but they held long and confidential conversations on the landings, and I gathered, presently, that the pseudo Mrs. Stein had succeeded in persuading Rosie Campbell that, if the police were watching No. 34, Findlater Terrace, at all, it was undoubtedly on account of the unfortunate Mr. Stein’s faithful wife. I found it a little difficult to fathom Lady Molly’s intentions. We had been in the house over three weeks, and nothing whatever had happened. Once I ventured on a discreet query as to whether we were to expect the sudden re-appearance of Mr. Leonard Marvell. “For if that’s all about it,” I argued, “then surely the men from the Yard could have kept the house in view, without all this inconvenience and masquerading on our part.” But to this tirade my dear lady vouchsafed no reply. She and her newly acquired friend were, about this time, deeply interested in the case known as the “West End Shop Robberies,” which no doubt you recollect, since they occurred such a very little while ago. Ladies who were shopping in the large drapers’ emporiums during the crowded and busy sale time, lost reticules, purses, and valuable parcels, without any trace of the clever thief being found. The drapers, during sale-time, invariably employ detectives in plain clothes to look after their goods, but in this case it was the customers who were robbed, and the detectives, attentive to every attempt at “shoplifting,” had had no eyes for the more subtle thief. [IMAGE: images/img249.jpg CAPTION: “Still talking shrilly … the pseudo Mrs. Stein dragged her into our own sitting-room”] I had already noticed Miss Rosie Campbell’s keen look of excitement whenever the pseudo Mrs. Stein discussed these cases with her. I was not a bit surprised, therefore, when, one afternoon at about tea-time, my dear lady came home from her habitual walk, and, at the top of her shrill voice, called out to me from the hall: “Mary! Mary! they’ve got the man of the shop robberies. He’s given the silly police the slip this time, but they know who he is now, and I suppose they’ll get him presently. ’Tisn’t anybody I know,” she added, with that harsh, common laugh which she had adopted for her part. I had come out of the room in response to her call, and was standing just outside our own sitting-room door. Mrs. Tredwen, too, bedraggled and unkempt, as usual, had sneaked up the area steps, closely followed by Ermyntrude. But on the half-landing just above us the trembling figure of Rosie Campbell, with scared white face and dilated eyes, looked on the verge of a sudden fall.