Old Mrs. Bradworthy was an institution in theatrical London. She had sat, a genial fat figure in black silk, at the back of her little shop, just round the corner from Drury Lane, longer than the most elderly ingénue actress could remember. It was a gloomy shop, the light from the windows being all but cut off by the suits of stage armour which hung facing the street, and had so hung, growing daily dirtier, ever since they were made for Irving’s production of Macbeth. Mallett had been there once or twice before—although the interest of the detective in make-up and disguise is not nearly so great as is often supposed—and he never ceased to marvel that so small a place could hold the vast stock of dresses, wigs and stage accessories without which no amateur play-producing society, no pageant or fancy-dress ball could hope to be successful. It was a wonder, too, that even the proprietress, inured as she was to the blackness in which she lived, could find her way about. The unwary visitor, straying in the dingy recesses at the back of the shop, could be fortunate if he did not break his knees over some “property” or another on the floor, or bump his head on a pantomime mask hanging unseen from above; but Mrs. Bradworthy, guided by some instinct of her own, would go at once to the mustiest corner in her establishment and bring from it at the first attempt exactly what the most exotic fancy of her customer required. She had lived so long in the atmosphere of the stage that she and everything about her seemed a trifle unreal. The very assistants in the shop looked more like supers than ordinary human beings. Only her charges were firmly related to the workaday world, and these, Mallett knew, were no joke. One does not become an institution in trade—even when that trade is a theatrical one—without a keen sense of business.

He found the old lady sitting behind the counter, working, as usual, on her endless accounts. She greeted him with pleasure.

“Well, Mr. Mallett, this is a nice surprise! What can I do for you today?”

“I’ve called about Lord Bernard Gaveston’s account,” began the inspector.

“Lord Bernard, indeed!” The old lady took him up at once. “Why can’t he pay, I want to know? It isn’t becoming a gentleman, let alone a lord, to keep me out of my money all this time.”

“I wonder if you’d let me look at his account,” said Mallett, diplomatically avoiding taking sides in the controversy. “There’s one item in it that interests me a little.”

With surprising strength for her age the old lady instantly reached down a heavy ledger from a shelf behind her, and quickly found the place.