The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective | Page 2

her mouth,
then lays it to the charge of her ignorance of our language; breaks into
voluble French; becomes theatrical in action, and then goes off into
hysterics once more."

"All that is quite Français, you know," said Loveday. "Do the
authorities at Scotland Yard lay much stress on the safe being left
unlocked that night?"
"They do, and they are instituting a keen enquiry as to the possible
lovers the girl may have. For this purpose they have sent Bates down to
stay in the village and collect all the information he can outside the
house. But they want someone within the walls to hob-nob with the
maids generally, and to find out if she has taken any of them into her
confidence respecting her lovers. So they sent to me to know if I would
send down for this purpose one of the shrewdest and most clear-headed
of my female detectives. I, in my turn, Miss Brooke, have sent for
you--you may take it as a compliment if you like. So please now get
out your note-book, and I'll give you sailing orders."
Loveday Brooke, at this period of her career, was a little over thirty
years of age, and could be best described in a series of negations.
She was not tall, she was not short; she was not dark, she was not fair;
she was neither handsome nor ugly. Her features were altogether
nondescript; her one noticeable trait was a habit she had, when
absorbed in thought, of dropping her eyelids over her eyes till only a
line of eyeball showed, and she appeared to be looking out at the world
through a slit, instead of through a window.
Her dress was invariably black, and was almost Quaker-like in its neat
primness.
Some five or six years previously, by a jerk of Fortune's wheel,
Loveday had been thrown upon the world penniless and all but
friendless. Marketable accomplishments she had found she had none,
so she had forthwith defied convention, and had chosen for herself a
career that had cut her off sharply from her former associates and her
position in society. For five or six years she drudged away patiently in
the lower walks of her profession; then chance, or, to speak more
precisely, an intricate criminal case, threw her in the way of the
experienced head of the flourishing detective agency in Lynch Court.
He quickly enough found out the stuff she was made of, and threw her

in the way of better-class work--work, indeed, that brought increase of
pay and of reputation alike to him and to Loveday.
Ebenezer Dyer was not, as a rule, given to enthusiasm; but he would at
times wax eloquent over Miss Brooke's qualifications for the profession
she had chosen.
"Too much of a lady, do you say?" he would say to anyone who
chanced to call in question those qualifications. "I don't care
twopence-halfpenny whether she is or is not a lady. I only know she is
the most sensible and practical woman I ever met. In the first place, she
has the faculty--so rare among women--of carrying out orders to the
very letter: in the second place, she has a clear, shrewd brain,
unhampered by any hard-and-fast theories; thirdly, and most important
item of all, she has so much common sense that it amounts to
genius--positively to genius, sir."
But although Loveday and her chief as a rule, worked together upon an
easy and friendly footing, there were occasions on which they were
wont, so to speak, to snarl at each other.
Such an occasion was at hand now.
Loveday showed no disposition to take out her note-book and receive
her "sailing orders."
"I want to know," she said, "If what I saw in one newspaper is
true--that one of the thieves before leaving, took the trouble to close the
safe-door, and to write across it in chalk: 'To be let, unfurnished'?"
"Perfectly true; but I do not see that stress need be laid on the fact. The
scoundrels often do that sort of thing out of insolence or bravado. In
that robbery at Reigate, the other day, they went to a lady's Davenport,
took a sheet of her note-paper, and wrote their thanks on it for her
kindness in not having had the lock of her safe repaired. Now, if you
will get out your note-book—"
"Don't be in such a hurry," said Loveday calmly: "I want to know if

you have seen this?" She leaned across the writing-table at which they
sat, one either side, and handed to him a newspaper cutting which she
took from her letter-case.
Mr. Dyer was a tall, powerfully-built man with a large head, benevolent
bald forehead and a genial smile. That smile, however, often proved a
trap to the unwary, for