The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4034]
Greatly gratified by the advantage he now indisputably held over her, he picked up the hat and approached the door through which she must in another minute emerge.
She did not come.
He waited and waited, and still she did not come. At last, driven by impatience, he ventured to open the door he had previously hesitated to touch and took a quick look in. Girls, girls! nothing but girls! No Madame Duclos anywhere.
Something must have happened to interrupt her escape. Either she had been caught in the attempt by the superintendent or by some one else of equal authority. This, if bad for her, was also bad for him, as a quiet hold-up in the manner he had planned was certainly better than the public one which must now follow.
Sorry for her and sorry for himself, Mr. Gryce returned to the office just as the superintendent entered from the opposite door. He thought the latter looked a little queer, and in an instant he learned why.
"Was the woman you wanted a staid, elderly person, apparently a foreigner?"
"Yes--of French birth, I am told."
"Well, I guess you were all right in distrusting her. She's gone--took a notion that night work didn't agree with her and left without so much as a 'By your leave!' She must have smelt you out in some uncanny way. Too bad! She bade fair to be just the woman we wanted for a very nice part of the work."
"Do you mean she's really out of the building--that you didn't stop her----"
"I didn't know what she was up to, till she was gone. I----"
"But how did she get out? She didn't go by the employees' door for I stood there on the watch. I had seen her receive a note----"
"A note? How? Who gave it to her?"
"Some girl."
"And you saw this? How could you? Been through the work-rooms?"
"No. I saw her from this window, as I was looking diagonally across the court. She was in one of the opposite rooms over there----"
The superintendent broke into a hearty laugh.
"Fooled!" he cried. "You police detectives are a smart crowd, but our old factory with its string of useless windows has led you astray for once. You weren't looking into any one of the rooms over there. You were looking at a reflection in that useless old window behind which the elevator runs. That happens when the elevator running on that side is down. I've seen it often and laughed in my sleeve at the chance it gives me to observe on the sly how things are going on at certain benches. Many a girl has got her discharge--But no matter about that. Come here.
"The room you think you see over there--you will notice that nobody is at work in it now--is on this side of the building, and the woman you have in chase escaped by the south delivery-door. We are loading cars to-night from this side of the building, and she took a flying advantage of it. Men give way to a woman. Though there's an order against any such use of that door, you can't get one of them to hold onto a woman when she once gets it into her head to skip the premises. But she can't have gone far. This is a place of few houses and no big buildings besides the factory. If you take pains to head her off at the station, you'll be safe for to-night, and in the morning you can easily find her. Now I must go; but first, what was her offense? Theft, eh?"
"No. This woman whom we have let slip through our fingers is Madame Duclos, the mother of the girl shot in a New York museum. There is a big reward out for her recovery and detention, and----"
The superintendent stood aghast.
"Why didn't you say so? Why didn't you say so at once? I'd have had the whole troop file out before you. I'd have had----"
The detective caught at his hat.
"I wasn't aware that I had reached an age when I couldn't tell the difference between a reflection