After he had put two dresses on the bed, he was
obliged to search in the inner recesses of the wardrobe before he could
find a third. When he produced it, Mrs. Lecount made a sign to him to
stop. The end was reached already; he had found the brown Alpaca dress.
"Lay it out on the bed, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "You will see a double
flounce running round the bottom of it. Lift up the outer flounce, and
pass the inner one through your fingers, inch by inch. If you come to a
place where there is a morsel of the stuff missing, stop and look up at
me."
He passed the flounce slowly through his fingers for a minute or more,
then stopped and looked up. Mrs. Lecount produced her pocket-book and
opened it.
"Every word I now speak, sir, is of serious consequence to you and
to me," she said. "Listen with your closest attention. When the woman
calling herself Miss Garth came to see us in Vauxhall Walk, I knelt down
behind the chair in which she was sitting and I cut a morsel of stuff
from the dress she wore, which might help me to know that dress if I
ever saw it again. I did this while the woman's whole attention was
absorbed in talking to you. The morsel of stuff has been kept in my
pocketbook from that time to this.
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