THE DETECTIVE
87
sir.
If
you must know, I give my girls fresh linen and they can send
back the soiled without having to drag it publicly up and down and
around five or six flights of stairs. And what do you find wrong
with that?"
"Oh,I see." So
she
used it. But another idea jumped up in his
brain then, and he looked at his feet, suddenly mortified: was he
suspecting
her,
too? Why not, she was tough enough. But if she
was in on it, a ringmember, then she must know his predicament;
and
if
she was spiriting the meat away, he could hardly expect her
help. He saw a bundle of used sheets in the corner. The outside one
had a rather large, irregular, rusty stain on it. Obviously, it occurred
to
him,
and without thinking any further, here,
here
was his clue
to the missing meat, the five tons of beef gone in less than two
weeks. He kicked at it, placed his foot triumphantly on the bundle,
and heard himself shouting, "Aha! And what is
this,
Mrs. Jewett?
Where does
this
come from?"
"Mr. Acker! I
am
surprised to hear you speaking in this way.
This is a hotel, my dear sir, it is open to the public-as well you
ought to know after thirty years. All sorts of your people come here.
And we who are but servants don't look; neither do we ask.
If
you
must, shame yourself by dirtying your nose with what's none of your
affairs, but don't expect
me
to follow where you lead!"
Acker was beginning to say that it was very, very much his
affair, when he understood that he was not thinking of the same
thing that she was. Not in the least. "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs.
Jewett. Excuse me, please."
"What is it, for goodness sake? What can it
be,
Mr. Acker?"
He smiled deprecatingly, shrugged with
his
wrists, and then, as
the inspiration hit him like a bolt, said out very loud in a completely
irrelevant and prophetically rapt voice, "Of course! My God, of
course!
What comes down must go up!"
He turned and waddled
off, flopping his elbows in haste, and paid no heed to the coughing
and the smothered giggles, uncontrollably female, that rose behind
him into a stupid fit.
At last, having stopped to look to it that
his
storerooms and his
office were secured, he gained the alley where he paused for a
breather. His face glowed with the sweat of anticipation, his heart
thumped in embarrassed excitement again because he felt he was
