Hutchins snatched up the vessel and brought it crashing down on the hearthstone, his face shining with a set resolution.
“I’ve done with it, sir. It was the bitterness and despair that drove me to that. Now I can do without it.”
The door was hastily opened and Miss Hutchins looked anxiously from her father to the visitors and back again.
“Oh, whatever is the matter?” she exclaimed. “I heard a great crash.”
“This gentleman is going to clear me, Meg, my dear,” blurted out the old man irrepressibly. “And I’ve done with the drink for ever.”
“Hutchins! Hutchins!” said Carrados warningly.
“My daughter, sir; you wouldn’t have her not know?” pleaded Hutchins, rather crest-fallen. “It won’t go any further.”
Carrados laughed quietly to himself as he felt Margaret Hutchins’s startled and questioning eyes attempting to read his mind. He shook hands with the engine-driver without further comment, however, and walked out into the commonplace little street under Parkinson’s unobtrusive guidance.
“Very nice of Miss Hutchins to go into half-mourning, Parkinson,” he remarked as they went along. “Thoughtful, and yet not ostentatious.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Parkinson, who had long ceased to wonder at his master’s perceptions.
“The Romans, Parkinson, had a saying to the effect that gold carries no smell. That is a pity sometimes. What jewellery did Miss Hutchins wear?”
“Very little, sir. A plain gold brooch representing a merry-thought—the merry-thought of a sparrow, I should say, sir. The only other article was a smooth-backed gun-metal watch, suspended from a gun-metal bow.”
“Nothing showy or expensive, eh?”
“Oh dear no, sir. Quite appropriate for a young person of her position.”
“Just what I should have expected.” He slackened his pace. “We are passing a hoarding, are we not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We will stand here a moment. Read me the letterpress of the poster before us.”
“This ‘Oxo’ one, sir?”
“Yes.”
“‘Oxo,’ sir.”
Carrados was convulsed with silent laughter. Parkinson had infinitely more dignity and conceded merely a tolerant recognition of the ludicrous.
“That was a bad shot, Parkinson,” remarked his master when he could speak. “We will try another.”
For three minutes, with scrupulous conscientiousness on the part of the reader and every appearance of keen interest on the part of the hearer, there were set forth the particulars of a sale by auction of superfluous timber and builders’ material.
“That will do,” said Carrados, when the last detail had been reached. “We can be seen from the door of No. 107 still?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No indication of anyone coming to us from there?”
“No, sir.”
Carrados walked thoughtfully on again. In the Holloway Road they rejoined the waiting motor car. “Lambeth Bridge Station,” was the order the driver received.
From the station the car was sent on home and Parkinson was instructed to take two first-class singles for Richmond, which could be reached by changing at Stafford Road. The “evening rush” had not yet commenced and they had no difficulty in finding an empty carriage when the train came in.
Parkinson was kept busy that journey describing what he saw at various points between Lambeth Bridge and Knight’s Cross. For a quarter of a mile Carrados’s demands on the eyes and the memory of his remarkable servant were wide and incessant. Then his questions ceased. They had passed the “stop” signal, east of Knight’s Cross Station.
The following afternoon they made the return journey as far as Knight’s Cross. This time, however, the surroundings failed to interest Carrados. “We are going to look at some rooms,” was the information he offered on the subject, and an imperturbable “Yes, sir” had been the extent of Parkinson’s comment on the unusual proceeding. After leaving the station they turned sharply along a road that ran parallel with the line, a dull thoroughfare of substantial, elderly houses that were beginning to sink into decrepitude. Here and there a corner residence displayed the brass plate of a professional occupant, but for the most part they were given up to the various branches of second-rate apartment letting.
“The third house after the one with the flagstaff,” said Carrados.
Parkinson rang the bell, which was answered by a young servant, who took an early opportunity of assuring them that she was not tidy as it was rather early in the afternoon. She informed Carrados, in reply to his inquiry, that Miss Chubb was at home, and showed them into a melancholy little sitting-room to await her appearance.
“I shall be ‘almost’ blind here, Parkinson,” remarked Carrados, walking about the room. “It saves explanation.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Parkinson.
Five minutes later, an interval suggesting that Miss Chubb also found it rather early in the afternoon, Carrados was arranging to take rooms for his attendant and himself for the short time that he would be in London, seeing an oculist.
“One bedroom, mine, must face north,” he stipulated. “It has to do with the light.”
Miss Chubb replied that she quite understood. Some gentlemen, she added, had their requirements, others their fancies. She endeavoured to suit all. The bedroom she had in view from the first did face north. She would not have known, only the last gentleman, curiously enough, had made the same request.
“A sufferer like myself?” inquired Carrados affably.
Miss Chubb did not think so. In his case she regarded it merely as a fancy. He had said that he could not sleep on any other side. She had had to turn out of her own room to accommodate him, but if one kept an apartment-house one had to be adaptable; and Mr Ghoosh was certainly very liberal in his ideas.
“Ghoosh? An Indian gentleman, I presume?” hazarded Carrados.
It appeared that Mr Ghoosh was an Indian. Miss Chubb confided that at first she had been rather perturbed at the idea of taking in “a black man,” as she confessed to regarding him. She reiterated, however, that Mr Ghoosh proved to be “quite the gentleman.” Five minutes of affability put Carrados in full possession of Mr Ghoosh’s manner of life and movements—the dates of his arrival and departure, his solitariness and his daily habits.
“This would be the best bedroom,” said Miss Chubb.
It was a fair-sized room on the first floor. The window looked out on to the roof of an outbuilding; beyond, the deep cutting of the railway line. Opposite stood the dead wall that Mr Carlyle had spoken of.
Carrados “looked” round the room with the discriminating glance that sometimes proved so embarrassing to those who knew him.
“I have to take a little daily exercise,” he remarked, walking to the window and running his hand up the woodwork. “You will not mind my fixing a ‘developer’ here, Miss Chubb—a few small screws?”
Miss Chubb thought not. Then she was sure not. Finally she ridiculed the idea of minding with scorn.
“If there is width enough,” mused Carrados, spanning the upright critically. “Do you happen to have a wooden foot-rule convenient?”
“Well, to be sure!” exclaimed Miss Chubb, opening a rapid succession of drawers until she produced the