"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 covers everything, and is respectable, but he mostly
parts with it in April.
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