“Who?” they said. “The thief? A woman?” They did not stay, but thrust through the door.
Mr. Jermyn dragged me through with them. “You say you've got it, Martin?”
“Yes,” I answered, handing him the book. “Here it is.”
“That's a mercy,” he said. “Now then, where's the thief?”
I had been out of the court, I suppose thirty seconds; it cannot have been more. Yet, when I went back with those two men, the woman had gone, as though she had never been there. “She's over the wall,” cried the captain, running up the court. But when we looked over the wall there was no trace of her, except some slight scratches upon the brick, where her toes had rested. On the other side of the wall was a tulip bed full of rows of late flowering tulips, not yet out. There was no footmark on the earth. Plainly she had not jumped down on the other side. “Check,” said captain. “Is she in one of the houses?”
But the houses on the left side of the court (on the other side the court had no houses, only brick walls seven feet high) were all old, barred in, deserted mansions, with padlocks on the doors. She could not possibly have entered one of those.
“They're old plague-houses,” said Mr. Jermyn.
“They've been deserted twenty years now, since the great sickness.”
“Yes?” said the captain, carelessly. “But where can she have got to?”
“Well. It beats me,” Mr. Jermyn replied. “But perhaps she ran along the wall to the end, then jumped down into the lane. That's the only thing she could have done. By the way, boy, you were shot at. Were you hit?”
“No,” I answered. “But I got jolly near it. The bullet went just by me.”
“Ah,” he said. “Take this. You'll have to be armed in future.”
He handed me a beautiful little double-barrelled pocket pistol. “Be careful,” he said. “It's loaded. Put it in your pocket. You musn't be seen carrying arms here. That would never do.”
“Boy,” said the captain. “D'ye think you could shin up that water-spout, so as to look over the parapet there, on to the leads of the houses?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I could, from the top of the wall.”
“Why,” Mr. Jermyn said. “She couldn't have got up there.”
“An active woman might,” the captain said. “You see, the water-spout is only six feet long from the wall to the eaves. There's good footing on the brackets. It's three quick steps. Then one vigorous heave over the parapet. There you are, snug as a purser's billet, out of sight.”