--no fear of any questions which might afterwards be asked
in cross-examination. She dealt out sovereigns--womanfully, and had
had Mrs. and Miss Meager at her feet. Before the second visit was
completed they were both certain that the Bohemian converted Jew had
murdered Mr. Bonteen, and were quite willing to assist in hanging
him.

"Yes, Ma'am," said Mrs. Meager, "he did take the key with him. Amelia
remembers we were a key short at the time he was away." The absence
here alluded to was that occasioned by the journey which Mr. Emilius
took to Prague, when he heard that evidence of his former marriage
was being sought against him in his own country.

"That he did," said Amelia, "because we were put out ever so. And he
had no business, for he was not paying for the room."

"You have only one key."

"There is three, Ma'am. The front attic has one regular because he's
on a daily paper, and of course he doesn't get to bed till morning.
Meager always takes another, and we can't get it from him ever so."

"And Mr. Emilius took the other away with him?" asked Madame Goesler.

"That he did, Ma'am. When he came back he said it had been in a
drawer,--but it wasn't in the drawer. We always knows what's in the
drawers."

"The drawer wasn't left locked, then?"

"Yes, it was, Ma'am, and he took that key--unbeknownst to us," said
Mrs. Meager. "But there is other keys that open the drawers. We are
obliged in our line to know about the lodgers, Ma'am."

This was certainly no time for Madame Goesler to express
disapprobation of the practices which were thus divulged. She smiled,
and nodded her head, and was quite sympathetic with Mrs. Meager. She
had learned that Mr. Emilius had taken the latch-key with him to
Bohemia, and was convinced that a dozen other latch-keys might have
been made after the pattern without any apparent detection by the
London police. "And now about the coat, Mrs. Meager."

"Well, Ma'am?"

"Mr. Meager has not been here since?"

"No, Ma'am. Mr. Meager, Ma'am, isn't what he ought to be. I never do
own it up, only when I'm driven. He hasn't been home."

"I suppose he still has the coat."

"Well, Ma'am, no. We sent a young man after him, as you said, and the
young man found him at the Newmarket Spring."

"Some water cure?" asked Madame Goesler.

"No, Ma'am. It ain't a water cure, but the races. He hadn't got the
coat. He does always manage a tidy great coat when November is coming
on, because it cove