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I amused myself for a moment with the thought of Miss Penny's conversion Miss Penny confronting a vast
assembly of Fathers of the Church, rattling her earrings at their discourses on the Trinity, laughing her
appalling laugh at the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, meeting the stern look of the Grand Inquisitor
with a flash of her bright, emotionless hare's eyes. What was the secret of the woman's formidableness?
But it was missing the story. What had happened? Ah yes, the gist of it was that Sister Agatha had appeared
one morning, after two or three days' absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the overalls of a hospital
charwoman, with a handkerchief instead of a winged coif on her shaven head.
"Dead," said Miss Penny; "she looked as though she were dead. A walking corpse, that's what she was. It was
a shocking sight. I shouldn't have thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. She
walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she had great burnt rings round her eyes and deep
lines in her face. And the general expression of unhappiness that was something quite appalling."
She leaned out into the gangway between the two rows of tables, and caught the passing waiter by the end of
one his coat-tails. The little Italian looked round with an expression of surprise that deepened into terror on his
face.
"Half a pint of Guinness," ordered Miss Penny. "And, after this, bring me some jam roll."
"No jam roll to-day, madam."
"Damn!" said Miss Penny. "Bring me what you like, then."
She let go of the waiter's tail and resumed her narrative.
"Where was I? oh Yes, I remember. She came into my room, I was telling you, with a bucket of water and a
brush, dressed like a charwoman. Naturally I was rather surprised. 'What on earth are you doing, Sister
Agatha?' I asked. No answer. She just shook her head, and began to scrub the floor. When she'd finished, she
left the room without so much as looking at me again. 'What's happened to Sister Agatha?' I asked my nurse
when she next came in. 'Can't say.' 'Won't say,' I said. No answer. It took nearly a week to find out what really
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had happened. Nobody dared tell me; it was strengst verboten as they used to say in the good old days. But I
wormed it out in the long run. My nurse, the doctor, the charwomen I got something out of all of them. I
always get what I want in the end." Miss Penny laughed like a horse.
"I'm sure you do," I said politely.
"Much obliged," acknowledged Miss Penny. "But to proceed. My information came to me in fragmentary
whispers. 'Sister Agatha ran away with a man.' Dear me! 'One of the patients.' You don't say so. 'A criminal
out of the jail.' The plot thickens. 'He ran away from her.' It seems to grow thinner again. They brought her
back here; she's been disgraced. There's been a funeral service for her in the chapel coffin and all. She had to
be present at it her own funeral. She isn't a nun any more. She has to do charwoman's work now, the roughest
in the hospital. She's not allowed to speak to anybody, and nobody's allowed to speak to her. She's regarded as
dead," Miss Penny paused to signal to the harassed little Italian. "My small 'Guinness,'" she called out.
"Coming, coming," and the foreign voice cried "Guinness" down the lift, and from below another voice
echoed, "Guinness."
"I filled in the details bit by bit. There was our hero, to begin with; I had to bring him into the picture, which
was rather difficult, as I had never seen him. But I got a photograph of him. The police circulated one when he
got away; I don't suppose they ever caught him." Miss Penny opened her bag. "Here it is," she said. "I always
carry it about with me; it's become a superstition. For years, I remember, I used to carry a little bit of heather
tied up with string. Beautiful, isn't it? There's a sort of Renaissance look about it, don't you think? He was
half-Italian, you know."
Italian. Ah, that explained it. I had been wondering how Bavaria could have produced this thin faced creature
with the big dark eyes, the finely modelled nose and chin, and the fleshy lips so royally and sensually curved.
"He's certainly very superb," I said, handing back the picture.
Miss Penny put it carefully away in her bag. "Isn't he?" she said. "Quite marvellous. But his character and his
mind, were even better. I see him as one of those innocent, childlike monsters of iniquity who are simply
unaware of the existence of right and wrong. And he had genius--the real Italian genius for engineering, for
dominating and exploiting nature. A true son of the Roman aqueduct builders he was, and a brother of the
electrical engineers. Only Kuno that was his name didn't work in water; he worked in women. He knew how
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