by Ellen Wood
“He said, was Mrs. Chaffen at home, and could he see her,” replied Sam. “He’s a waiting outside.”
Mrs. Chaffen sat back on her heels, one hand resting on the bucket, the other grasping the wet scrubbing-brush, and her face the very picture of consternation as she stared at the boy. She had believed herself free for a full week to come.
“Is it Mr. Henley himself, Sam?”
“It ain’t Mr. Henley at all,” said Sam. “It’s the gentleman what’s staying at Mrs. Jinks’s.”
“What the plague brings him here this morning of all others, when I’ve got the floor in a sop and not a chair to ask him to set down upon!” cried the woman, relieved of her great fear, but vexed nevertheless to be interrupted in her work, and believing the intruder to be Mr. Cattacomb, come on one of his pastoral visits: for that excellent divine made no scruple, in his zeal, of looking in occasionally on Mr. Sumnor’s flock as well as his own. “Parsons be frightful bothers sometimes!”
“‘Tain’t the parson; it’s the t’other one,” said Sam Bull.
Mrs. Chaffen rose from her knees, stepped gingerly across the wet floor, and took a peep through the window. There she saw Mr. Strange in the centre of a tribe of young Bulls, dividing among them a piece of lettered gingerbread. Sam, afraid of not coming in for his share of the letters, bolted out of the room.
“Ask the gentleman if he’ll be pleased to step in, Sam, and to excuse the litter,” she called after the boy. “I don’t mind him, she mentally added, seizing upon a mop to mop the wet off the floor, and then letting down her gown, “and he must want something particular of me; but I’d not have cared to stand Cattakin’s preaching this busy morning.”
Mr. Strange came in in his pleasant way, admiring everything, from the room to the bucket, and assuring her he rather preferred wet floors to dry ones. While she was reaching him a chair and dusting it with her damp apron, he held out his hand, pointing to where the cuts had been.
“Look here, Mrs. Chaffen. I have been thinking of coming to you this day or two past, but fancied I might see you in Paradise Row, for Pd rather have your opinion than a doctor’s at any time. The hand has healed, you see.”
“Yes, sir; it looks beautiful.”
“But I am not sure that it has healed properly, though it may look ‘beautiful,’” he rejoined. “Feel this middle cut. Here; just on the seam.”
Mrs. Chaffen rubbed her fingers on the same check apron, and then passed them gently over the place he spoke of. “What do you feel?” he asked.
“Well, sir, it feels a little hard, and there seems to be a kind of knot,” she said, still examining the place.
“Precisely so. There’s a stiffness about it that I don’t altogether like, and now and then it has a kind of a prickly sensation. What I have been fancying is, that a bit of glass may possibly be in it still.”
But Mrs. Chaffen did not think so. In her professional capacity she talked nearly as learnedly as a doctor could have talked, though not using quite the same words. Her opinion was that if glass had remained in the hand it would not have healed: she believed that Mr. Strange had only to let it alone and have a little patience, and the symptoms he spoke of would go away.
It is not at all improbable that this opinion was Mr. Strange’s own; but he thanked her and said he would abide by her advice, and gave her a little more gentle flattery. Then he sat down in the chair she had dusted, as if he meant to remain for the day, in spite of the disorder of affairs and the damp floor, and entered on a course of indiscriminate gossip. Mrs. Chaffen liked to get on quickly with her work, but she liked gossip better; no matter how busy she might be, a dish of that never came amiss; and she put her back against another chair and folded her bare arms in her apron, and gossiped back again.
In a smooth and natural manner, apparently without intent, the conversation presently turned upon the gentleman (or ghost) Mrs. Chaffen had seen at the Maze. It was a theme she had not tired of yet “Now you come to talk of that,” cried the detective, “do you know what idea has occurred to me upon the point, Mrs. Chaffen? I think the gentleman you saw may have been Sir Karl Andinnian.”
Nurse Chaffen, contrary to her usual habit, did not immediately reply, but seemed to fall into thought. “Was it Sir Karl?”
“Well now that’s a odd thing!” she broke forth at last. “Miss Blake asked me the very same question, sir — was it Sir Karl Andinnian?”
“Oh, did she. When?”
“When we had been talking of the thing in your rooms, sir — that time that I had been a dressing of your hand. In going down stairs, somebody pulled me, all mysterious like, into the Reverend Cattakin’s parlour: I found it was Miss Blake, and she began asking me what the gentleman looked like and whether it was not Sir Karl.”
“And was it Sir Karl?”
“Being took by surprise in that way,” went on Mrs. Chaffen, disregarding the question, “I answered Miss Blake that I had not had enough time to notice the gentleman and could not say whether he was like Sir Karl or not. Not having reflected upon it then, I spoke promiscuous, you see sir, on the spur of the moment.”
“And was it Sir Karl?” repeated Mr. Strange. “Now that you have had time to reflect upon it, is that the conclusion you come to?”
“No, sir; just the opposite. A minute or two afterwards, if I’d only waited, I could have told Miss Blake that it was not Sir Karl. I couldn’t say who it was, but ’twas not him.”
This assertion was so contrary to the theory Mr. Strange had been privately establishing that it took him somewhat by surprise.
“Why are you enabled to say surely it was not Sir Karl?” he questioned, laughing lightly, as if the matter amused him.
“Because, sir, the gentleman was taller than Sir Karl. And, when I came to think of it, I distinctly saw that he had short hair, either lightish or grayish: Sir Karl’s hair is a beautiful wavy brown, and he wears it rather long.”
“Twilight is very deceptive,” remarked Mr. Strange. “No doubt of that, sir: but there was enough light coming in through the passage windows for me to see what I have said I am quite positive it was not Sir Karl Andinnian.”
“Would you swear it was not?”
“No, sir, I’d not swear it: swearing’s a ticklish thing: but I am none the less sure. Mr. Strange, it was not Sir Karl for certain,” she added impressively. “The gentleman was taller than Sir Karl and had a bigger kind of figure, broader shoulders like, and it rather struck me at the time that he limped in his walk. That I couldn’t hold to, however.”
“Just the description of what Salter would most likely be now,” mused the detective, his doubts veering about uncomfortably. “He would have a limp, or something worse, after that escapade out of the railway carriage.”
“Well, if you are so sure about it, Mrs. Chaffen, I suppose it could not have been Sir Karl.”
“I can trust my sight, sir, and I am sure. What ever could have give rise to the thought that it was Sir Karl?” continued she, after a moment’s pause.
“Why, you must know, Mrs. Chaffen, that Sir Karl Andinnian is the only man in Foxwood who is likely to put on evening dress as a rule. And being a neighbour of Mrs. Grey’s and her landlord also, it was not so very improbable he should have called in, don’t you see?”
Thus enlightened, Mrs. Chaffen no longer wondered how the surmise had arisen. She reiterated her assertion that it was not Sir Karl; and Mr. Strange, gliding into the important question of soda for cleaning boards, versus soap, presently took an affable leave.
There he was, walking back again, his thoughts almost as uncertain as the wind. Was Miss Blake’s theory right, or was this woman’s? If the latter, and the man was in truth such as she described him, taller and broader than Sir Karl, why then he could, after all, have staked his life upon the Maze being Salter’s place of concealment. What if both were right? It might be. Sir Karl might be paying these stealthy visits to Mrs. Grey, and yet be totally ignorant that any such person as Salter was at the Maze
. They would hardly dare to tell him; and Salter would take care to conceal himself when Sir Karl was there. At any rate, he — Mr. Strange — must try and put the matter to rest with all speed, one way or the other. Perhaps, however, that resolution was more easy to make than to carry out. As a preliminary step he took a walk to the police station at Basham, and was seen in the street there by Sir Karl Andinnian.
CHAPTER XII.
Baffled.
THE Maze, in all its ordinary quietness, was lying at rest under the midday sun. That is, as regards outward and visible rest: of inward rest, the rest that diffuses peace in the heart, there was but little. It was the day following the expedition of Mr. Strange to the house of Bull the stonemason.
Mrs. Grey’s baby was lying in its cot Mrs. Grey, who had been hushing it to sleep, prepared to change her morning wrapper for the gown she would wear during the day. A bouquet of fresh-cut flowers lay on the dressing-table, and the chamber window stood open to the free, fresh air. Ann Hopley was in the scullery below, peeling the potatoes for dinner, and the old man servant was out somewhere over his work. As the woman threw the last potato into the pan, there came a gentle ring at the gate bell. She turned round and looked at the clock in the kitchen.
“Who’s that, I wonder! It’s too early for the bread. Any way, you’ll wait till I’ve got my potatoes on, whoever you may be,” concluded she, addressing the unknown intruder.
The saucepan on, she went forth. At the gate stood an inoffensive-looking young man with a large letter or folded parchment in his hand.
“What do you want!” asked Ann Hopley.
“Is this the Maze!”
“Yes.”
“Does a lady named Grey live here!”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ve got to leave this for her, please.”
Taking the key from her pocket, Ann Hopley unsuspiciously opened the gate, and held forth her hand to take the parchment. Instead of giving it to her, the man pushed past, inside; and, to Ann Hopley’s horror, Mr. Strange and a policeman suddenly appeared, and followed him. She would have closed the gate upon them; and she made a kind of frantic effort to do so: but one woman cannot effect much against three determined men.
“You can shut it now,” said Mr. Strange, when they were inside. “Don’t be alarmed, my good woman: we have no wish to harm you.”
“What do you want? — and why do you force yourselves in, in this way?” she inquired, frightened nearly to death.
“I am a detective officer belonging to the London police force,” said Mr. Strange, introducing himself in his true character. “I bring with me a warrant to search the house called the Maze and its out-door premises” — taking the folded paper from the man’s hand. “Would you like me to read it to you before I go on?”
“Search them for what?” asked Ann Hopley, feeling angry with herself for her white face. “I don’t want to hear anything read. Do you think we have got stolen goods here? — I’m sure you are enough to scare a body’s senses away, bursting in like this!”
Mr. Strange slightly laughed. “We are not looking for stolen goods,” he said.
“What for then?” resumed the woman, striving to be calm.
“For some one whom I believe is concealed here.”
“Some one concealed here! Is it me? — or my mistress? — or my old husband?”
“No.”
“Then you won’t find anybody else,” she returned with an air of relief. “There’s no soul in the place but us three, and that I’ll vow: except Mrs. Grey’s baby. And we had good characters, sir, I can tell you, both me and my husband, before Mrs. Grey engaged us. Would we harbour loose characters here, do you suppose?”
It was so much waste of words. Mr. Strange went without further parley into the intricacies of the Maze, calling to the policeman to follow him, and bidding the other — who was a local policeman also in plain clothes: both of them from Basham — remain near the gate and guard it against anybody’s attempted egress. All this while the gate had been open. Ann Hopley locked it with trembling fingers, and then followed the men through the maze, shrieking out words of remonstrance at the top of her voice. Had there been ten felons concealed within, she made enough noise to warn them all.
“For goodness sake, woman, don’t make that uproar!” cried the detective. “We are not going to murder you.”
The terrified face of Mrs. Grey appeared at her chamber window. Old Hopley was gazing through the chink of the door of the tool-house, which he was about to clean out. The detective heeded nothing. He went straight to the house door and entered it.
“Wait here at the open door, and keep a sharp look round inside and out,” were his orders to the policeman. “If I want you, I’ll call.”
But Ann Hopley darted before Mr. Strange to impede his progress — she was greatly agitated — and seized hold of his arm.
“Don’t go in,” she cried imploringly; “don’t go in, for the love of heaven! My poor mistress is but just out of her confinement and the fever that followed it, and the fright will be enough to kill her. I declare to you that what I have said is true. There’s nobody on these premises but those I’ve named: my mistress and us two servants, me and Hopley. It can’t be one of us you want!”
“My good woman, I have said that it is not But, if it be as you say — that there’s no one else, no one concealed here — why object to my searching?”
“For her sake,” reiterated the agitated woman; “for the poor lady’s sake.”
“I must search: understand that,” said Mr. Strange. “Better let me do it quietly.”
As if becoming impressed with this fact, and that it was useless to contend further, Ann Hopley suddenly took her hands off the detective, leaving him at liberty to go where he would. Passing through the kitchen, she began to attend to her saucepan of potatoes.
Armed with his full power, both of law and of will, Mr. Strange began his search. The warrant had not been obtained from Sir Karl Andinnian, but from a magistrate at Basham: it might be that he did not feel sufficiently assured of Sir Karl’s good faith: therefore the Maze was not averted beforehand.
It was not a large house; the rooms were soon looked into, and nothing suspicious was to be seen. Three beds were made up in three different chambers: the one in Mrs. Grey’s room and two others. Was one of these occupied by Salter? The detective could not answer the doubt. They were plain beds in plain rooms, and it might be that the two servants did not sleep together. Knocking at the door, he entered Mrs. Grey’s chamber: the baby slept in its cot: she stood at the glass in her dressing-gown, her golden hair falling about her.
“I beg your pardon; madam; I beg your pardon a thousand times,” said the detective, with deprecation, as he removed his hat. “The law sometimes obliges us to do disagreeable things; and we, servants of it, cannot help ourselves.”
“At least tell me the meaning of all this,” she said with ashy face and trembling lips. And he explained that he was searching the house with the authority of a search-warrant.
“But what is it you want? Who is it?”
Again he explained to her that they were looking after an escaped fugitive, who, it was suspected, might have taken refuge in the Maze.
“I assure you, sir,” she said, her gentle manner earnest, her words apparently truthful, “that no person whatever, man or woman, has been in the Maze since I have inhabited it, save myself and my two servants.”
“Nevertheless, madam, we have information that some one else has been seen here.”
“Then it has been concealed from me,” she rejoined. “Will you not at least inform me who it is you are searching for? In confidence if you prefer: I promise to respect it.”
“It is an escaped criminal named Salter,” replied the officer, knowing that she would hear it from Sir Karl Andinnian, and wishing to be as civil to her as he could.
“Salter!” returned Mrs. Grey, showing the surprise that perhaps she did not feel. “Salter! Why Salter — at least
if it is Salter — is the man who lives opposite these outer gates, and goes by the name of Smith. Salter has never been concealed here.”
The very assertion made by Sir Karl Andinnian. Mr. Strange took a moment to satisfy his keen sight that there was no other ingress to this room, save by the door, and no piece of furniture large enough to conceal a man in, and was then about to bow himself out. But she spoke again.
“On my sacred word of honour, sir, I tell you truth. Sir Karl Andinnian — my landlord — has been suspecting that his agent, Smith, might turn out to be Salter: I suspected the same.”
“But that man is not Salter, madam. Does not bear any resemblance to him. It was a misapprehension of Sir Karl’s.”
“And — do I understand that you are still looking for him here? — in the Maze? I do not understand.”
“Not looking for that man Smith, madam, but for the real Salter. We have reason to think he is concealed here.”
“Then, sir, allow me to affirm to you in all solemnity, that Salter is not, and never has been concealed here,” she said with dignity. “Such a thing would be impossible without my knowledge.”
He did not care to prolong the conversation. He had his work to do, and no words from her or anyone else would deter him from it. As he was quitting the room, he suddenly turned to ask a question.
“I beg your pardon, madam. Have you any objection to tell me whether your two servants, Hopley and his wife, occupy the same room and bed?”
For a moment or two she gazed at him in silence, possibly in surprise at the question, and then gave her answer almost indifferently.
“Not in general, I believe. Hopley’s cough is apt to be troublesome at night, and it disturbs his wife. But I really do not know much about their arrangements: they make them without troubling me.”
The detective proceeded on his mission. He soon discovered the concealed door in the evening sitting-room, and passed into the passage beyond it. Ah, if Salter, or any other criminal, were in hiding within its dark recesses, there would be little chance for him now! The passage, very close and narrow, had no egress on either side; it ended in a flight of nearly perpendicular stairs. Groping his way down, he found himself in a vault, or underground room. Mr. Strange was provided with matches, and lighted one. It was a bare place, the brick walls dripping moisture, the floor paved with stone. Here he discovered another narrow passage that led straight along, it was hard to say how far, and he had need to strike more than one match before he had traversed it. It ended in a flight of stairs: which he ascended, and — found himself in a summer-house at the extreme boundary of the garden.