# The Author of "Trixie"/Chapter 16

When Chloë received this note she put on her hat, went straight down to Scotland Yard and told them that she wished to make a communication of an exceptionally confidential nature, whereupon she was ushered into the presence of the official whose duty it was to deal with such matters. His name was Inspector Olivarez. He courteously begged Mrs. Bisham Dunkle to be seated and to state her business. She might, he added, rely implicitly upon his allowing what she might say to go no farther. Not an inch.
Chloë walked over to a screen which ​stood in a corner of the room and pulled it aside. Having thus disclosed a young man in a chair, who licked the point of a pencil while he spread open a notebook on his knee. "Yes," she said, "there you are my lad, aren't you? Push off, I prithee. As for you, you mendacious old bald-head," she went on briskly to Inspector Olivarez, "I'm ashamed of you, that I am. No wonder the Criminal Investigation Department of this place is a laughing-stock, if that's all you can do in the way of deception."
Inspector Olivarez spread his hands. "Ah," he said, "but we don't often have to do with such very wide-awake young ladies as yourself. The device is crude, I admit, but it's generally quite effective. Henderson," he went on to his pencil-licking subordinate, "we cannot hope to put it across Mrs. Dunkle. You may go. ​And now," he concluded, when Mr. Henderson had passed through the door, "and now, my dear lady, what about it?"
"Well," said Chloë, as she sat down facing him, "it's this way. I believe—but I'm not quite certain—that I can put you on to a person who, several years ago, committed a crime. He's one of several people who will be at the Sloane Street Safe Deposit to-morrow at midday. I want you to send a plain-clothes man to meet me there and to stand by to arrest this person in case I find that I can definitely charge him. Will you do it?"
"You prefer," asked Inspector Olivarez, tapping his teeth with his thumb-nail, "to be no more particular in your statements at present? You don't wish to say what the crime is, for example? Or when it was committed? Or where?"
"No," she said, "I don't!"
​"I can see," he said, scratching his ear, "that it wasn't a murder." He said this hoping that she would say, "Well, that's where you're jolly well mistaken, because it was." He was disappointed.
"I shan't say what it wasn't," she replied, "nor yet what it was. Them as lives longest'll learn most, Inspector."
The Inspector rubbed his left eye with his right forefinger.
"It's evident," he said, "that it happened more than ten years ago." He trusted that she would reply, "Well, you're wrong, because it happened only five years ago." Again he was foiled.
"It's evident," she said tartly, "that you're a very clever old gentleman, aren't you? But am I to have this plain-clothes man?"
The Inspector tried a new snare. He was infinitely resourceful.
​"I happen to know," he said, passing a palm across his baldness, "that it took place at Much Wenlock." His design was to make her cry out, "Sold again! It took place at Weston-super-Mare," or, as the case might be. She did nothing of the sort.
"Come, come, Inspector," she said. "Enough of this verbal sword-play. That plain-clothes man—do you send him or don't you?"
The Inspector had now tried everything he knew. He raised his hand to his forehead, saluting his visitor's superior intelligence, scratched his right temple and said, "I see, Mrs. Dunkle, that I can't hope to get anything out of you that you don't want to give away. So be it. The officer you ask for shall be placed at your disposal. Where did you say you wanted him to meet you? Threadneedle Street?"
​"No, you blitherer; Sloane Street."
"Ah, yes," he murmured. "Outside the Record Office, wasn't it?"
"No, old fool. Inside the Safe Deposit."
"Of course, of course. This day week, you said, didn't you; and at four o'clock a.m. precisely?"
"My garters!" she cried. "I said tomorrow, and at midday."
"Perfectly, perfectly; "my dear Mrs. Dunkle," he cooed. "Yes, yes, I've got all that down. You may depend on us absolutely. The man you require shall be there. He will be wearing a black bowler hat, a black morning coat and waistcoat, striped trousers and brown boots. His necktie will be Cambridge blue, with a small pearl and ruby pin in it. He will, in a word, be got up to pass as a rich client of the Safe Deposit who has come ​to clip the coupons off his War Savings Certificates. Yes, yes! And now I need detain you no longer, I think. No, no. Yes, yes."
"Quite, quite," she said and left him.