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Updated: May 23, 2025
I'll tell 'im I arranged for you to 'ave ten days to a fortnight to think it over." "Thinking won't make money," said Enid in a low voice. "Such a beautiful young lady as yourself, Modam, can't find it difficult to put 'er 'and on five hundred pounds," murmured Mrs. Piper, and as she said the words there came a leering smile over her small, pursed-up mouth.
"Thanks to your late gentleman, Piper knows all about dogs, and all 'e requires, Modam, to set 'im up as a dogfancier, so to speak, is a moderate bit o' money. As 'e says 'imself, five hundred pound would do it easy. If I may make so bold, that's what reely brought me 'ere, Mrs. Crofton. It do seem to us both, that, under the circumstances, you might feel disposed to find the money?"
As a matter of fact, I've done a foolish thing in coming here, to Beechfield, at all. Only the other day one of my husband's relations advised me to let the house." "Piper thinks, Modam, as how you might 'elp 'im to a job with Major Radmore." The name tripped quickly off the speaker's tongue, as if she was quite used to the sound. Enid felt a throb of dismay.
Piper, when I say that I really will do all I can for him. But it's not easy now to hear of good jobs, and Piper doesn't seem easy to suit." "You wouldn't care to take my 'usband on again yourself, Modam?" Again there followed that curious pause which somehow filled Enid with a vague fear. "I wish I could," she said at last, "but I can't afford it, Mrs. Piper.
After her first shock of dismayed surprise to find that Piper was married at all, she had imagined Piper's wife as something young and, of course, in a way, attractive and easily managed. "Did you ever come down to my house in Essex?" she asked, still trying to speak pleasantly. "No, Modam, I never was there.
"Piper?" repeated Enid Crofton in a low, hesitating voice. "Then are you Mrs. Piper?" Was it conceivable that this strange-looking old thing was Piper's wife? "I've been Mrs. Piper eighteen years," replied Madame Flora composedly, "but I've always kep' on my business, Modam. It's not much of a business now, worse luck! Ladies won't part with their clothes, not when they're dropping off them.
Soon there came a familiar rap and a welcome cup of tea. She was sipping it, luxuriously, when there suddenly came a very different kind of rap on the door. It was a sharp, insistent knock, and before she could call out "Come in," the door opened, and a singular-looking figure advanced into the luxurious-looking, low-ceilinged bedroom. "Excuse me coming up like this, Modam.
There was another brief pause: "If you 'aven't got five hundred pounds, Modam, I take it the insurance money has not yet been paid, for it was a matter of two thousand pounds or so Piper understood from that party what came down to make enquiries." Enid Crofton looked at her torturer dumbly. She did not know what to say what to admit, and what to deny.
Now she came quite close up to her victim, for by now Enid Crofton knew that she was in very truth this woman's victim. "You think it over," whispered Madame Flora. "We're not in a 'urry to a day or two. And look here, Modam, I'll be open with you! If you'll do that for Piper, it'll be in full discharge of anything you owe 'im d'you take my meaning?"
"I wish I'd thought of that, Modam." The woman spoke with a touch of regret. "But your maids expected you might be back any minute, and I did want to meet you, for Piper's that down on 'is luck, I sometimes don't know what to do with 'im! Instead of wanting to employ ex-soldiers, as in course they ought ter, people seem just to avoid them "
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