Mrs. Chaffen disturbed.
We have now to return to Mr. Strange. That eminent detective was, to
tell the truth, somewhat puzzled by his interview with Sir Karl
Andinnian, held in the road; thrown, so to say, slightly on his beam
ends. The earnest assurances of Sir Karl--that the individual he had
been suspecting was the agent Smith, and that there was not, and could
not be, any gentleman residing at the Maze--had made their due
impression, for he saw that Sir Karl was a man whose word might be
trusted. At the same time he detected, or thought he detected, an
undue eagerness on Sir Karl's part to impress this upon him; an
eagerness which the matter itself did not justify, unless Sir Karl had
a private and personal motive for it. Musing on this, Mr. Strange had
continued to walk about that evening instead of going on to his
lodgings; and when Miss Blake surprised him underneath the trees at
the Maze gate--or, rather, surprised herself by finding him there--he
had not sought the spot to watch the gate, but as a shelter of
seclusion while he thought. The stealthy entrance of Sir Karl
Andinnian with a key taken from his pocket, and the whispered
communication from Miss Blake, threw altogether another light upon the
matter, and served to show what Sir Karl's personal motive might be.
According to that lady's hints, Sir Karl was in the habit of stealing
into the Maze, and that it was no one but Sir Karl himself who had
been seen by Nurse Chaffen.
Mr. Detective Strange could not conceal from his acute brain that, if
this were true, his own case was almost as good as disposed of, and he
might prepare to go back to town. Salter, the prey he was patiently
searching out, was at the Maze or nowhere--for Mr. Strange had turned
the rest of the locality inside out, and knew that it contained no
trace of him. If the gentleman in the evening dress, seen by Nurse
Chaffen, was Sir Karl Andinnian, it could not have been Philip Salter:
and, as his sole motive for suspecting the Maze was that worthy
woman's account of him she had seen, why the grounds of suspicion
seemed slipping from under him.
He thought it out well that night. Well and thoroughly. The tale was
certainly likely and plausible. Sir Karl Andinnian did not appear to
be one who would embark on this kind of private expedition; but, as
the detective said to himself, one could not answer for one's own
brother. Put it down as being Sir Karl that the woman saw, why then
the mystery of her not having seen him again was at an end: for while
she was there Sir Karl would not be likely to go to the Maze and show
himself a second time.
The more Mr. Strange thought it out, the further reason he found for
suspecting that this must be the true state of the case. It did not
please him. Clear the Maze of all suspicion as to Salter, and it would
become evident that they had been misled, and that so much valuable
time had been wasted. He should have to go back to Scotland Yard and
report the failure. Considering that he had latterly been furnishing
reports of the prey being found and as good as in his hands, the
prospect was mortifying. This would be the second consecutive case in
which he had signally failed.
But it was by no means Mr. Strange's intention to take the failure for
granted. He was too wary a detective to do that without seeking for
proof, and he had not done with Foxwood yet. The first person he must
see was Mrs. Chaffen.
Somewhat weary with his night reflections and not feeling quite so
refreshed as he ought, for the thing had kept him awake till morning,
Mr. Strange sat down to his breakfast languidly. Watchful Mrs. Jinks,
who patronized her easy lodger and was allowed to visit his tea, and
sugar, and butter, and cheese with impunity, observed this as she
whipped off the cover from a dish of mushrooms that looked as though
it might tempt an anchorite.
"You've got a headache this morning, Mr. Strange, sir. Is it bad?"
"Oh, very bad," said Mr. Strange, who did not forget to keep up his
rôle of delicate health as occasion afforded opportunity.
"What things them headaches are!" deplored Mrs. Jinks. "Nobody knows
whence they come nor how to drive 'em away. Betsey Chaffen was nursing
a patient in the spring, who'd had bilious fever and rheumatis
combined; and to hear what she said about that poor dear old
gentleman's head----"
"By the way, how is Mrs. Chaffen?" interrupted Mr. Strange, with scant
ceremony, and no regard to the old gentleman's head. "I have not seen
her lately."
"She was here a day or two ago, sir; down in my kitchen. As to how she
is, she's as strong as need be: which it's thanks to you for
inquiring. _She_ never has nothing the matter with her."
"Is she out nursing?"
"Not now. She expects to be called out soon, and is waiting at home
for it."
"Where is her home?"
"Down Foxglove Lane, sir, turning off by Mr. Sumnor's church. Bull,
the stonemason, lives in the end house there, and she have lodged with
'em for years. Bull tells her in joke sometimes that some of 'em ought
to be took ill, with such a nurse as her in the house. Which they
never are, for it's as healthy a spot as any in Foxwood."
Mr. Strange had a knack of politely putting an end to his landlady's
gossip when he pleased, and of sending her away. He did so now: and
the widow transferred herself and her attentions to Mr. Cattacomb's
parlour.
People must hold spring and autumn cleanings, or where would their
carpets and curtains bel Mrs. Chaffen, though occupying but one humble
room (with a choice piece of furniture in it that was called a
"bureau" by day, and was a bed by night) was not exempt from the
general sanitary obligations. Mrs. Bull considered that she instituted
these periodical bouts of scrubbing oftener than there was occasion
for: but Betsey Chaffen liked to take care of her furniture--which was
her own--and was moreover a cleanly woman.
On this self-same morning she was in the thick of it: her gown turned
up about her waist, her hands and arms bare to the elbow, plunged into
a bucket of soapsuds, herself on her knees, and the furniture all
heaped together on the top of the shut-up bureau in the corner, when
one of the young Bulls came in with the astounding news that a
gentleman was asking for her.
"Goodness bless me!" cried the poor woman, turning cold all over, "it
can't be that I'm fetched out, can it, Sam?--and me just in the middle
of all this mess!"
"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 I'd
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.