Ella and Jack eyed each other. Madge took refuge in a chair, conscious of a feeling of irritation at her weakness now that the provocation had passed. Ella regarded her curiously.
"What's the matter with you, Madge? What's happened?"
"It's nothing--only that horrible woman has upset me."
"Who is she? and what's she been doing? and what's she want?"
"I don't know who she is, or what she wants, or anything at all about her. I only know that she's prevented me getting anything for your tea."
"That's all right--we've got something, haven't we, Jack?" Jack waved a parcel. "But whatever did you let such an extraordinary-looking creature into the house for? and whatever did she mean by screaming out that she's a ghost's wife? Is she very mad?"
"I think she is--and I didn't let her in."
Then, while they were preparing tea, the tale was told, or at least a part of it. But even that part was enough to make Jack Martyn grave. As the telling proceeded, he grew graver and graver, until, at the end, he wore a face of portentous gloom. When they seated themselves to the meal he made precisely the remark which they had expected him to make. He rested his hands on his knees, and he solemnly shook his head.
"This comes of your being alone in the house!"
Ella laughed.
"There! now you've started him on his own particular crotchet; he'll never let you hear the last of this."
Jack went on.
"I've said before, and I say again, and I shall keep on saying, that you two girls ought not to live alone by yourselves in a house in this out-of-the-way corner of the world."
"Out-of-the-way corner of the world!--on Wandsworth Common!"
"For all practical intents and purposes you might as well be in the middle of the Desert of Sahara; you might shriek and shriek and I doubt if any one would hear you. This agreeable visitor of Madge's might have cut her throat from ear to ear, or chopped her into mincemeat, and she would have been as incapable of summoning assistance as if she had been at the top of Mont Blanc."
"That's it. Jack--pile it on!"
"I don't think it's fair of you to talk like that, Ella; I'm not piling it on; I'm just speaking the plain and simple truth. Honestly, Madge, when you've been alone in the house all day long, haven't you felt that you were at the mercy of the first evil-disposed person who chose to come along; or, if you haven't felt it before, don't you think you'll feel it now?"
"No--to both your questions."
"Supposing this woman comes back again to-morrow?"
Madge had to bite her lip to repress a shudder; the idea was not a pleasant one.
"She won't come back."
"But suppose she does?--and from what you say I think it very probable that she will; if not to-morrow, then the day after."
"If she comes the day after to-morrow she'll find me out; I shall be out all day."
"There's a confession! It's only because you know that you will be out that you're able to face the prospect with equanimity."
"You are not entitled to infer anything of the kind."
Ella interposed, perceiving that the girl was made uncomfortable by the man's persistence.
"Don't do quite so much supposing, Jack; let me do a little for a change. Suppose we lived in one of those flats in the charming neighbourhood of Chancery Lane or Bloomsbury, after which--vicariously--your soul so hankers, how much better off should we be there?"
"You would, at any rate, be within the reach of assistance."
"No more so than we are now, because, quite probably, the kind of neighbours we should be likely to have in the sort of flat we should be able to afford would be worse--much worse--than none at all. The truth is that two lonely, hard-up girls--desperately hard-up girls--will be lonely wherever they are. We are quite prepared for that. Only we intend to choose the particular kind of loneliness which we happen to prefer--don't we, Madge?"
"Of course we do."
"It makes me wild to hear you say such things. Rather than you should feel like that, I'd marry on nothing."
"Thank you, but I wouldn't. I find it quite hard enough to be single on nothing."
"You know what I mean; I don't mean actually on nothing. I was reckoning it up the other night. My income----"
"Your income's like mine, Jack--capable of considerable increment. And would you be so kind as to change the subject?"
But the thing was easier said than done. Jack's thoughts had been started in a groove, and they kept in it; the conversation was continually reverting to the subject of the girls' loneliness. His last words as he left the room were on the familiar theme.
"I grant that there are advantages in having a pretty little place like this all to yourselves, especially when you get it at a peppercorn rent; and that it's nice to be your own mistresses, and all that kind of thing. But in the case of you two girls the disadvantages are so many and so serious, that I wonder you don't see them more clearly for yourselves. Anyhow, Madge has had her first peep at them to-day, and I sincerely hope it will be her last; though I am persuaded that before very long you will discover that, as a place of residence for two lone, lorn young women. Clover Cottage has its drawbacks."
When Ella returned from saying farewell to Mr. Martyn in the hall, she glanced at Madge and laughed.
"Jack's in his prophetic mood."
"I shouldn't be surprised if his prophecy's inspired."
Her tone was unexpectedly serious. Ella stared.
"What do you mean?"
"What I say."
"You're oracular, my dear. What do you say?"
"That I think it quite possible that we shall find that residence at Clover Cottage has its drawbacks; I've lighted on one or two of them already."
Ella leaned against the edge of the table, regarding the speaker with twinkling eyes and smiling lips.
"My dear, you don't mean to say that that crazy creature has left such an impression on your mind?"
"You see, my dear Ella, I haven't told you all the story. I felt that I had given Mr. Martyn a sufficient handle against us as it was; so I refrained."
"Pray what else is there to tell? To judge from your looks and manner one would think that there was something dreadful."
"I don't know about dreadful, but there certainly is something--odd. To begin with, that wretched woman was not my only visitor."
Then the rest of the tale was told--and this time the whole of it. Ella heard of the stranger who had intruded on the pretence of seeking music lessons: of his fear of the seedy loafer in the street; of his undignified exit through the back door; and the whole of his singular behaviour.
"And you say he could play?"
"Play! He played like an--I was going to say an angel, but I'll substitute artist."
"And he looked like a gentleman?"
"Certainly, and spoke like one."
"But he didn't behave like one?"
"I won't go so far as to say that. He said or did nothing that was positively offensive when he was once inside the house."
"But you called him a thief?"
"Yes; but, mind you, I didn't think he was one. I felt so angry."
"I should think you did. I should have felt murderous. And you don't think the man in the road was a policeman?"
"Not he. He was as evil-looking a vagabond as ever I saw."
"It doesn't follow merely on that account, my dear, that he wasn't a policeman."
There was malice in the lady's tones.
"Not at all; but even a policeman of that type would hardly have jumped out of his skin with fright at the sight of that horrible woman. He knew her, and she knew him. There's a mystery somewhere."
"How nice!"
"Nice? You think so? I wish you had interviewed her instead of me. My dear Ella, she--she was--beyond expression."
Ella came and seated herself on a stool at Madge's feet. Leaning her arms on her knees she looked up at her face.
"Poor old chap! It wasn't an agreeable experience."
Madge's answer was as significant as it was curt.
"It wasn't."
She gave further details of what the woman had said and done, and of how she had said and done it--details which she had omitted, for reasons of her own, in Mr. Martyn's presence. By the time she had finished the listener was as serious as the narrator.
"It makes me feel creepy to hear you."
"It would have made you creepy to have heard her. I felt as if the house was peopled with ghosts."
"Madge, don't! You'll make me want to sleep with you if you go on like that. Poor old chap! I'm sorry if I seemed to chaff you." She reflected before she spoke again. "I can see that it can't be nice for you to be alone in the house while I'm away in town all day, earning my daily bread--especially now that the days are drawing in. If you like, we'll clear out of this, this week--we could do it at a pinch-- and we'll return to the seething masses."
Madge reflected, in her turn, before she answered.
"Nothing of the sort has happened before, and nothing may happen again. But I tell you frankly, that, if my experiences of to-day do recur, it won't take much to persuade me that I have an inclination towards the society of my fellows, and that I prefer even the crushes of Petticoat Lane to the solitudes of Wandsworth Common."
"Well, in that case, it shall be Petticoat Lane."
There was silence. Presently Madge stretched herself--and yawned.
"In the meantime," suggested Ella, putting her hand up to her own lips, "what do you say to bed?" And it was bed. "Would you like me to sleep with you," inquired Ella as they went upstairs; "because if you would like me to very much, I would."
"No," said Madge, "I wouldn't. I never did like to share my bed with any one, and I never shall. I like to kick about, and I like to have plenty of room to do it in."
"Very good--have plenty of room to do it in. Ungrateful creature! If you're haunted, don't call to me for aid."
As it happened, Madge did call to her for aid, after a fashion; though it was not exactly because she was haunted.
Madge was asleep almost as soon as she was between the sheets, and it seemed to her that as soon as she was asleep she was awake again--waking with that sudden shock of consciousness which is not the most agreeable way of being roused from slumber, since it causes us to realise too acutely the fact that we have been sleeping. Something had woke her; what, she could not tell. She lay motionless, listening with that peculiar intensity with which one is apt to listen when woke suddenly in the middle of the night. The room was dark. There was the sound of distant rumbling: they were at work upon the line, where they would sometimes continue shunting from dusk to dawn. She could hear, faintly, the crashing of trucks as they collided the one with the other. A breeze was murmuring across the common. It came from Clapham Junction way--which was how she came to hear the noise of the shunting. All else was still. She must have been mistaken. Nothing had roused her. She must have woke of her own accord.
Stay!--what was that? Her keen set ears caught some scarcely uttered sound. Was it the creaking of a board? Well, boards will creak at night, when they have a trick of being as audible as if they were exploding guns. It came again--and again. It was unmistakably a board that creaked--downstairs. Why should a board creak like that downstairs, unless--it was being stepped upon? As Madge strained her hearing, she became convinced that there were footsteps down below--stealthy, muffled footsteps, which would have been inaudible had it not been for the tell-tale boards. Some one was creeping along the passage. Suddenly there was a noise as if a coin, or a key, or some small object, had fallen to the floor. Possibly it was something of the kind which had roused her. It was followed by silence--as if the person who had caused the noise was waiting to learn if it had been overheard. Then once more the footsteps--she heard the door of the sitting-room beneath her open, and shut, and knew that some one had entered the room.
In an instant she was out of bed. She hurried on a pair of bedroom slippers which she kept beside her on the floor, and an old dressing-gown which was handy on a chair, moving as quickly and as noiselessly as the darkness would permit. Snatching up her candlestick, with its box of matches, she passed, without a moment's hesitation, as noiselessly as possible from the room. On the landing without she stood, for a second or two, listening. There could be no doubt about it--some one was in the sitting-room. Someone who wished to make himself or herself as little conspicuous as possible; but whose presence was still sufficiently obvious to the keen-eared auditor.
Madge went to Ella's room, and, turning the handle, entered. As she did so, she could hear Ella start up in bed.
"Who's there?" she cried.
"Hush! It's I. There's some one in the sitting-room."
Lighting a match, Madge applied it to the candle. Ella was sitting up in bed, staring at her, with tumbled hair and sleepy eyes, apparently only half awake.
"Madge!--what do you mean?"
"What I say. We're about to experience another of the drawbacks of rural residence. There's some one in the sitting-room--another uninvited guest."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite. If you care to go downstairs and look, you'll be sure."
"Whatever shall we do?"
"Do!--I'll show you what we'll do. Where's that revolver of Jack Martyn's, which he lent you?"
"It's in my handkerchief drawer--but it's loaded."
"All the better. I've fired off a revolver before to-day, and I am quite willing, at a pinch, to fire off another one to-night. I'll show you what we'll do." While she spoke, Madge had been searching the drawer in question. Now she stood with the weapon in her hand. "Perhaps you'll be so good as to get out of bed, and put something on, unless you prefer to go downstairs as the Woman in White. I suppose you're not afraid?"
Ella had got so far out of bed as to sit on the side, with her feet dangling over the edge.
"Well--I don't know that I am exactly afraid, but if you ask me if being woke in the middle of the night, to be told there's burglars in the house, is the kind of thing I'm fond of, I'll admit it isn't."
Madge laughed. Ella's tone, and air of exceeding ruefulness, apparently struck her as comical.
"It occurs to me, Miss Duncan, that it won't be long before Mr. Martyn makes a convert of you. As for me, now my blood's getting up--and it is getting up--I am beginning to think that it is rather fun."
"Are you? Then I'm afraid your sense of humour must be keener than mine." She followed Madge's example--putting on a pair of slippers and a dressing-gown. "Now, what are you going to do?"
"I'm going down to ask our guest to show me his card of invitation."
"Madge! Hadn't we better open the window and scream? Or you might fire into the air--if you're sure you do know how to fire a revolver."
"I'll soon show you if I know--and I'll show our visitor too. And I don't think we'd better open the window and scream. Are you coming?"
Madge moved out of the room, Ella going after her with a rush.
"Madge!--don't leave me!"
The two girls stood listening at the top of the stairs--Madge with the candlestick in one hand, and the revolver in the other.
"It strikes me that we sha'n't be able to inquire for that card of invitation, because he doesn't mean to stay for us to ask him. His intention is not to stand upon the order of his going, but to go at once."
Apparently the proceedings in Ella's bedroom had been audible below. Evidently the person in the sitting-room had become startled. There was a stampede of heavy feet across the floor; the noise of furniture being hastily pushed aside; then they could hear the sound of the window being unlatched, and opened. It was plain that the intruder, whoever it was, was bent on showing a clean pair of heels.
It seemed as if the certitude of this fact had inspired Ella with sudden courage. Anyhow, she there and then shouted, with the full force of her lungs, as if she all at once had found her voice.
"Who's that downstairs?"
"Speak!" exclaimed Madge, with a nearly simultaneous yell, "or I fire!"
And she did fire--though no one spoke; or, for the matter of that, had a chance of speaking; for the words and the shot came both together. What she fired at was not quite plain, since, if appearances could be trusted, the bullet lodged in the ceiling; for, at the same moment, a small shower of plaster came tumbling down.
"Madge!" cried Ella. "I believe you've sent the bullet right through the roof! How you frightened me!"
"It was rather a startler," admitted Madge, in whose voice there seemed a slight tendency to tremor. "I'd no idea it would make such a noise--the other revolver I fired didn't. Ella!--what are you doing?"
The question was induced by the fact that Ella had rushed to the landing window, thrown the sash up, thrust her head out, and was shouting as loudly as she could:
"Thieves! thieves!--help!"
Madge came up and put her head out beside her.
"Can you see him? Has he gone?"
"Of course he's gone--there he is, running down the road."
"Are you sure it's a man?"
"A man! It's a villain!--Help! thieves! help!"
"Don't make that noise. What's the use? No one can hear you, and it only gives him the impression that we're afraid of him, which we're not; as, if he comes back again, we'll show him. There's more bullets in this revolver than one--I remember Jack saying so; and I'm not forced to send them all through the roof."
Ella drew her head inside. There was colour in her cheeks, and fire in her eyes. Now that the immediate danger seemed past her humour was a ferocious one.
"I wish you'd shot him."
Madge was calmer, though still sufficiently sanguinary.
"Well--I couldn't very well shoot him if I never caught a glimpse of him, could I? But we'll do better next time."
Ella clenched her fists, and her teeth too.
"Next time!--Oh, I think a burglar's the most despicable wretch on the face of the earth, and, if I had my way, I'd send every one caught in the act right straight to the gallows."
"Precisely--when caught. But you can scarcely effect a capture by standing on the top of the stairs, and inquiring of the burglar if he's there."
"I know I behaved like a coward--you needn't remind me. But that was because I was taken by surprise. If he were to come back----"
"Yes--if he were to come back?" Madge looked out of the window--casually. "I fancy there's some one coming down the road--it may be he returning."
Ella clutched at her arm.
"Madge!"
"You needn't be alarmed, my dear, I was mistaken; it's no one after all. Suppose, instead of breathing threatenings and slaughters 'after the battle is over,' we go down and see what mementoes of his presence our visitor has left behind--or, rather, what mementoes he has taken with him."
"Are you sure he was alone?"
"We shall be able to make sure by going down to see."
"Oh, Madge, do you think----"
"No, my dear, I don't, or I should be no more desirous of going down than you. I'm only willing to go and see if there is some one there because I'm sure there isn't."
There was not--luckily. There was little conspicuously heroic about the bearing of the young ladies as they descended the stairs to suggest that they would have made short work of any ruthless ruffian who might have been in hiding. About halfway down, Madge gave what was perhaps an involuntary little cough; at which Ella started as if the other had been guilty of a crime; and both paused as if fearful that something dreadful might ensue. The sitting-room door was closed. They hung about the handle as if it had been the entrance to some Bluebeard's den, and unimaginable horrors were concealed within. When Madge, giving the knob a courageous twist, flung the door wide open, Ella's face was pasty white. Both perceptibly retreated, as if expecting some monster to spring out on them. But no one sprang--apparently because there was no one there.
A current of cold air came from the room.
"The window's open."
Ella's voice was tremulous. Her tremor had the effect of making Madge sarcastic.
"That's probably because our visitor opened it. You could hardly expect him to stop to close it, could you?"
She went boldly into the room--Ella hard on her heels. She held the candle above her head--to have it almost blown out by the draught. She placed it on the table.
"If we want to have a light upon the subject, we shall have to shut that window."
She did so. Then looked about her.
"Well, he doesn't seem to have left many tokens of his presence. There's a chair knocked over, and he's pushed the cloth half off the table, but I don't see anything else."
"He seems to have taken nothing."
"Probably that was because there was nothing worth his taking. If he came here in search of plunder, he must have gone away a disgusted man."
"If he came here in search of plunder?--what else could he have come for?"
"Ah! that's the question."
"What's this?" Stooping, Ella picked up something off the floor. "Here's something he's left behind, at any rate."
She was holding a scrap of paper.
"What is it--apièce de convictionof the first importance: the button off the coat by means of which the infallible detective hunts down the callous criminal?"
"I don't know what it is. It's a sort of hieroglyphic--if it isn't--nonsense."
Madge went and looked over her shoulder. Ella was holding half a sheet of dirty white notepaper, on which was written, with very bad ink and a very bad pen, in a very bad hand:--
"TOM OSSINGTON'S GHOST."
"Right--Straight across--three--four--up.
"Right--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--left eye--push."
The two girls read to the end--then over again. Then they looked at each other--Madge with smiling eyes.
"That's very instructive, isn't it?"
"Very. There seems to be a good deal of cat and dog about it."
"There does, I wonder what it means."
"If it means anything."
Madge, taking the paper from Ella's hand, went with it closer to the candle. She eyed it very shrewdly, turning it over and over, and making as if she were endeavouring to read between the lines.
"Do you know, Ella, that there is something curious about this."
"I suppose there is, since it's gibberish; and gibberish is curious."
"No, I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of the heading--'Tom Ossington's Ghost.' Do you know that that enterprising stranger, who came in search of music lessons he didn't want, asked me if my name was Ossington, and if no one of that name lived here."
"Are you sure Ossington was the name he mentioned? It's an unusual one."
"Certain; it was because it was an unusual one that I particularly noticed it. Then that dreadful woman was full of her ghosts, even claiming, as you heard, to be the ghost's wife. Doesn't it strike you, under the circumstances, as odd that the paper the burglar has left behind him, should be headed 'Tom Ossington's Ghost'?"
"It does seem queer--though I don't know what you are driving at."
"No; I don't know what I am driving at either. But I do know that I am driving at something. I'm beginning to think that I shall see a glimmer of light somewhere soon--though at present I haven't the faintest notion where."
"Do you think it was either of your visitors who has paid us another call to-night?"
"No; but I tell you what I do think."
"What?"
"I shouldn't be surprised if we've been favoured with a call from the individual who wasn't one of my visitors; the man in the road, who took to his heels in such a hurry at the sight of the woman."
"What cause have you to suppose that?"
"None whatever, I admit it frankly; but I do suppose it all the same. In the first place the man was burning to be one of my visitors, of that I'm persuaded--and he would have been if the woman hadn't come along. And in the second, he looked a burglar every inch of him. Ella, I'll tell you what!" She brought her hand on to the table with a crash which made Ella start, "There's a mystery about this house--you mark my words and see. It's haunted--in one sense, if it isn't in another."
Ella cast furtive glances over her shoulder, which were suggestive of anything but a mind at ease.
"You've a comfortable way of talking, upon my word."
Madge threw her arms out in front of her.
"There is a mystery about the house; it's one of these old, ramshackle sort of places in which there is that kind of thing--I'm sure of it. Aren't you conscious of a sense of mystery about the place, and don't you feel it's haunted?"
"Madge, if you don't stop talking like that, I'll leave the house this instant."
"The notion is not altogether an agreeable one, I'll allow; but facts are----"
"What's that?"
"What's what?"
Ella, clutching at Madge's arm, stared over her shoulder with a face white as a sheet.
"Did--didn't I hear s-something in the kitchen?"
"Something in the kitchen? If you did hear something in the kitchen, I'll shoot that something as dead as a door nail."
Madge caught up the revolver, which she had placed on the table.
"Madge, for goodness sake don't do anything rash!"
"I will do something rash--if you call it rash to shoot at sight any scoundrel who ventures to intrude on my premises at this hour of the night!--and I'll do it quickly! Do you think I'm going to be played the fool with because I'm only a woman! I'll soon prove to you I'm not--that is, if it is to be proved by a little revolver practice."
Madge spoke at the top of her voice, her words seeming to ring through the house with singular clearness. But whether this was done for the sake of encouraging herself and Ella, or with the view of frightening a possible foe, was an open question. She strode out of the room with an air of surprising resolution. Ella clinging to her skirts and following her, simply because she dare not be left behind. As it chanced, the kitchen door was open. Madge marched bravely into the room--only to find that her display of courage was thrown away, since the room was empty.
Having made sure of this, Madge turned to Ella with a smile on her face--though her cheeks, like her friend's, were whiter than they were wont to be.
"You see, we are experiencing some of the disadvantages of two lone, lorn young women being the solitary inhabitants of a rural residence--Jack Martyn scores."
For answer Ella burst into tears. Madge took her in her arms--as well as she could, for the candle in one hand and the revolver in the other.
"Don't cry, girl; there's nothing to cry at. You'll laugh at and be ashamed of yourself in the morning. I'll tell you what--I'll make an exception!--you shall have half my bed, and for the rest of the night we'll sleep together."
The next morning, information was given to a passing policeman of the events of the night, and in the course of the day an officer came round from the local station to learn particulars. Madge received him in solitary state; she had refused Ella's offer to stop away from business to keep her company, declaring that for that day, at any rate, she would be safe from undesirable intruders.
The officer was a plain-clothes man, middle-aged, imperfectly educated, with the stolid, matter-of-fact, rather stupid-looking countenance which one is apt to find an attribute of the detective of fact, rather than fiction.
"You say you didn't see him?"
"I saw the back of him."
"Hum!" This stands for a sort of a kind of a sniff.
"Would you know him if you saw him again?"
"From the glimpse which I caught of him last night I certainly shouldn't. It was pretty dark, and he was twenty or thirty yards down the road when I first caught sight of his back."
"You didn't follow him?"
"We did not."
Madge smiled as she thought of how such a suggestion would have been received had it been made at the time.
"He came in through the back window and left through the front?"
"That's it."
"And he took nothing?"
"No--but he left something behind him--he left this."
Madge produced the half-sheet of paper which Ella had picked up from the floor.
"You're sure this was his property?"
"I'm sure it isn't ours, and I'm sure we found it in this room just after he left it."
The officer took the paper; read it, turned it over and over; looked it up and down; read it again. Then he gave his mouth a rather comical twist; then he looked at Madge with eyes which he probably intended to be pregnant with meaning.
"Hum!" He paused to cogitate. "I suppose you know there's been a burglary here before?"
"I know nothing of the kind. We have only been here six weeks, and are quite strangers to the place."
"There was. Something more than a year ago. The house was empty at the time. The man who did it was caught at the job--and our chap got pretty well knocked about for his pains. But that wasn't the only time we've had business at this house; our fellows have been here a good many times."
"Neither my friend or I had the slightest notion that the house had such a reputation."
"I daresay not. It's been empty a good long time. I expect the stories which were told about it were against its letting."
"What sort of stories?"
"All sorts--nonsense, most of them."
"Were the people who lived here named Ossington?"
"Ossington?" The officer screwed his mouth up into the comical twist which it seemed he had a trick of giving it. "I believe it was, or, at any rate, something like it. A queer lot they were--very."
"Do you see what's written as a heading on that piece of paper?"
The officer's glance returned to the writing.
"'Tom Ossington's Ghost!'--yes, I noticed it, but I don't know what it means--do you?"
"Except that if the name of the people who lived here last was Ossington, it would seem as if last night's affair had some reference to the house's former occupants."
"Yes--it would look as if it had--when you come to look at it in that way." He was studying it as if now he had made up his mind to understand it clearly. "It looks as if it was some sort of cryptogram, and yet it mightn't be--it's hard to tell." He wagged his head. "I'll take it to our chaps, and see what they can make of it. Some men are better at this sort of thing than others." Folding up the paper he placed it in his pocket-book. "Am I to understand that you can give no description of the burglar--that there's no one you suspect?"
"I don't know that it amounts to suspicion--but there was a man hanging about here in rather a singular fashion whom I can't help thinking might have had a finger in the pie."
"Can you describe him?"
"He was about my height--I'm five feet six and a half--thick set, and I noticed he walked in a sort of rolling way; I thought he was drunk at first, but I don't believe he was. He kept his hands in his trousers pockets, and he was very shabbily dressed, in an old black coat--I believe you call them Chesterfields--which was buttoned down the front right up to the chin--I doubt if he had a waistcoat; a pair of old patched trousers--and I'm under the impression that his boots were odd ones. He had an old black billycock hat, with no band on, crammed over his eyes, iron-grey hair, and a fortnight's growth of whiskers on his cheeks and chin. He had a half impudent, half hang-dog air--altogether just the sort of person to try his hand at this sort of thing."
"I'll take down that description, if you'll repeat it."
She did repeat it--and he did take it down, with irritating slowness. When she had finished he read what he had written, tapping his teeth with the end of his pencil and looking most important.
"I shouldn't be surprised if you've laid your finger on the very man--and if we lay our fingers on him before the day is over. You will excuse my saying, miss, that you've got the faculty of observation--marked. I couldn't have given a better description of a chap myself--and I've been a bit longer at the game than you have. Now I'll just go through the place once more, and then I'll go; and then in due course you'll hear from us again."
He did go through the place once more--and he did go.
"Now," observed Madge to herself, as she watched him going down the road, "all that remains, is for us in due course to hear from you again--to some effect--and that, if you're the sort of blunderbuss I take you to be, will be never."
Turning from the window, she looked about the room, speaking half in jest and half in earnest.
"This is a delightful state of things--truly! It seems as if we couldn't have found a more undesirable habitation, if we had tried Petticoat Lane. Not the first burglar that's been in the place! And the house well known to the police--not to speak of a sinister reputation in all the country side! Charming! Clover Cottage seems to be an ideal place of residence for two lone, lorn young women. The abode of mystery, and, so far as I can make out, a sink of crime, one wonders if it still waits to become the scene of some ghastly murder to give to the situation its crowning touches. I shiver--or, at any rate, I ought to shiver--when I reflect on the horrors with which I may be, and probably am, surrounded!"
Ella returned earlier than the day before, and, this time, she came alone. The question burst from her lips the instant she was in the house.
"Well, has anything happened?"
"Nothing--of importance. It's true the police have been, but as it appears that they've been here over and over again before, that's a trifle. There's been at least one previous burglar upon the premises, and it seems that the house has been known to the police--and to the whole neighbourhood--for years, in the most disreputable possible sense."
Ella could but gasp.
"Madge!"
The statements which the officer had made were retailed, with comments and additions--and, it may be added, interpolations. Ella was more impressed even than Madge had been--being divided between concern and indignation.
"To think that we should have been inveigled into taking such a place! We ought to claim damages from those scamps of agents who let it us without a word of warning. You can't think how I have been worrying about you the whole day long; the idea of our being together in the place is bad enough, but the idea of your being alone in it is worse. What that policeman has said, settles it. Jack may laugh if he likes, but my mind is made up that I won't stop a moment longer in the house than I can help; the notion of your being all those hours alone here would worry me into the grave if nothing else did--and so I shall tell him when he comes."
Madge's manner was more equable.
"He will laugh at you, you'll find; and, unless I'm in error, here he is to do it."
As she spoke there was a vigorous knock at the front door.