The Big Bow Mystery | Page 2

bedroom, crying, "Seven o'clock, sir. You'll be late, sir. You must get
up at once." The usual slumbrous "All right" was not forthcoming; but,
as she herself had varied her morning salute, her ear was less expectant
of the echo. She went downstairs, with no foreboding save that the
kettle would come off second best in the race between its boiling and
her lodger's dressing.
For she knew there was no fear of Arthur Constant's lying deaf to the
call of Duty--temporarily represented by Mrs. Drabdump. He was a
light sleeper, and the tram-conductors' bells were probably ringing in
his ears, summoning him to the meeting. Why Arthur Constant,
B.A.--white-handed and white-shirted, and gentleman to the very purse
of him--should concern himself with tram-men, when fortune had
confined his necessary relations with drivers to cabmen at the least,
Mrs. Drabdump could not quite make out. He probably aspired to
represent Bow in Parliament; but then it would surely have been wiser
to lodge with a landlady who possessed a vote by having a husband
alive. Nor was there much practical wisdom in his wish to black his
own boots (an occupation in which he shone but little), and to live in
every way like a Bow working man. Bow working men were not so
lavish in their patronage of water, whether existing in drinking-glasses,
morning tubs, or laundress's establishments. Nor did they eat the

delicacies with which Mrs. Drabdump supplied him, with the assurance
that they were the artisan's appanage. She could not bear to see him eat
things unbefitting his station. Arthur Constant opened his mouth and
ate what his landlady gave him, not first deliberately shutting his eyes
according to the formula, the rather pluming himself on keeping them
very wide open. But it is difficult for saints to see through their own
halos; and in practice an aureola about the head is often
indistinguishable from a mist.
The tea to be scalded in Mr. Constant's pot, when that cantankerous
kettle should boil, was not the coarse mixture of black and green sacred
to herself and Mr. Mortlake, of whom the thoughts of breakfast now
reminded her. Poor Mr. Mortlake, gone off without any to Devonport,
somewhere about four in the fog-thickened darkness of a winter night!
Well, she hoped his journey would be duly rewarded, that his perks
would be heavy, and that he would make as good a thing out of the
"travelling expenses" as rival labour leaders roundly accused him of to
other people's faces. She did not grudge him his gains, nor was it her
business if, as they alleged, in introducing Mr. Constant to her vacant
rooms, his idea was not merely to benefit his landlady. He had done her
an uncommon good turn, queer as was the lodger thus introduced. His
own apostleship to the sons of toil gave Mrs. Drabdump no twinges of
perplexity. Tom Mortlake had been a compositor; and apostleship was
obviously a profession better paid and of a higher social status. Tom
Mortlake--the hero of a hundred strikes--set up in print on a poster, was
unmistakably superior to Tom Mortlake setting up other men's names at
a case. Still, the work was not all beer and skittles, and Mrs. Drabdump
felt that Tom's latest job was not enviable.
She shook his door as she passed it on her way back to the kitchen, but
there was no response. The street door was only a few feet off down the
passage, and a glance at it dispelled the last hope that Tom had
abandoned the journey. The door was unbolted and unchained, and the
only security was the latch-key lock. Mrs. Drabdump felt a whit uneasy,
though, to give her her due, she never suffered as much as most good
housewives do from criminals who never come. Not quite opposite, but
still only a few doors off, on the other side of the street, lived the

celebrated ex-detective Grodman, and, illogically enough, his presence
in the street gave Mrs. Drabdump a curious sense of security, as of a
believer living under the shadow of the fane. That any human being of
ill odour should consciously come within a mile of the scent of so
famous a sleuth-hound seemed to her highly improbable. Grodman had
retired (with a competence) and was only a sleeping dog now; still,
even criminals would have sense enough to let him lie.
So Mrs. Drabdump did not really feel that there had been any danger,
especially as a second glance at the street door showed that Mortlake
had been thoughtful enough to slip the loop that held back the bolt of
the big lock. She allowed herself another throb of sympathy for the
labour leader whirling on his dreary way towards Devonport Dockyard.
Not that he had