THE HOUSEMAID AT WOODBINE COTTAGE.
In less than a quarter of an hour after leaving the gate of Maudesley
Park, the fly came to a stand-still before Woodbine Cottage. Mr. Carter
paid the man and dismissed the vehicle, and went alone into the little
garden.
He rang a bell on one side of the half-glass door, and had ample
leisure to contemplate the stuffed birds and marine curiosities that
adorned the little hall of the cottage before any one came to answer
his summons. He rang a second time before anyone came, but after a
delay of about five minutes a young woman appeared, with her face tied
up in a coloured handkerchief. The detective asked to see Major Vernon,
and the young woman ushered him into a little parlour at the back of
the cottage, without either delay or hesitation.
The occupant of the cottage was sitting in an arm-chair by the fire.
There was very little light in the room, for the only window looked
into a miniature conservatory, where there were all manner of prickly
and spiky plants of the cactus kind, which had been the delight of the
late owner of Woodbine Cottage.
Mr. Carter looked very sharply at the gentleman sitting in the
easy-chair; but the closest inspection showed him nothing but a
good-looking man, between fifty and sixty years of age, with a
determined-looking mouth, half shaded by a grey moustache.
"I've come to make a few inquiries about a friend of yours, Major
Vernon," the detective said; "Mr. Dunbar, of Maudesley Abbey, who has
been missing since four o'clock this morning."
The gentleman in the easy-chair was smoking a meerschaum. As Mr. Carter
said those two words, "four o'clock," his teeth made a little clicking
noise upon the amber mouthpiece of the pipe.
The detective heard the sound, slight as it was, and drew his inference
from it. Major Vernon had seen Joseph Wilmot, and knew that he had left
the Abbey at four o'clock, and thus gave a little start of surprise
when he found that the exact hour was known to others.
"You know where Mr. Dunbar has gone?" said Mr. Carter, looking still
more sharply at the gentleman in the easy-chair.
"On the contrary, I was thinking of looking in upon him at the Abbey
this evening."
"Humph!" murmured the detective, "then it's no use my asking you any
questions on the subject?"
"None whatever. Henry Dunbar is gone away from the Abbey, you say? Why,
I thought he was still under medical supervision—couldn't move off his
sofa, except to take a turn upon a pair of crutches."
"I believe it was so, but he has disappeared notwithstanding."
"What do you mean by disappeared? He has gone away, I suppose, and he
was free to go away, wasn't he?"
"Oh! of course; perfectly free."
"Then I don't so much wonder that he went," exclaimed the occupant of
the cottage, stooping over the fire, and knocking the ashes out of his
meerschaum. "He'd been tied by the leg long enough, poor devil! But how
is it you're running about after him, as if he was a little boy that
had bolted from his precious mother? You're not the surgeon who was
attending him?"
"No, I'm employed by Lady Jocelyn; in fact, to tell you the honest
truth," said the detective, with a simplicity of manner that was really
charming: "to tell you the honest truth, I'm neither more nor less than
a private detective, and I have come down from London direct to look
after the missing gentleman. You see, Lady Jocelyn is afraid the long
illness and fever, and all that sort of thing, may have had a very bad
effect upon her poor father, and that he's a little bit touched in the
upper story, perhaps;—and, upon my word," added the detective, frankly,
"I think this sudden bolt looks very like it. In which case I fancy we
may look for an attempt at suicide. What do you think, now, Major
Vernon, as a friend of the missing gentleman, eh?"
The Major smiled.
"Upon my word," he said, "I don't think you're so very far away from
the mark. Henry Dunbar has been rather queer in his ways since that
railway smash."
"Just so. I suppose you wouldn't have any objection to my looking about
your house, and round the garden and outbuildings? Your friend _might_
hide himself somewhere about your place. When once they take an
eccentric turn, there's no knowing where to have 'em."
Major Vernon shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't think Dunbar's likely to have got into my house without my
knowledge," he said; "but you are welcome to examine the place from
garret to cellar if that's any satisfaction to you."
He rang a bell as he spoke. It was answered by the girl whose face was
tied up.
"Ah, Betty, you've got the toothache again, have you? A nice excuse for
slinking your work, eh, my girl? That's about the size of your
toothache, I expect! Look here now, this gentleman wants to see the
house, and you're to show him over it, and over the garden too, if he
likes—and be quick about it, for I want my dinner."
The girl curtseyed in an awkward countrified manner, and ushered Mr.
Carter into the hall.
"Betty!" roared the master of the house, as the girl reached the foot
of the stair with the detective; "Betty, come here!"
She went back to her master, and Mr. Carter heard a whispered
conversation, very brief, of which the last sentence only was audible.
That last sentence ran thus:
"And if you don't hold your tongue, I'll make you pay for it."
"Ho, ho!" thought the detective; "Miss Betsy is to hold her tongue, is
she? We'll see about that."
The girl came back to the hall, and led Mr. Carter into the two
sitting-rooms in the front of the house. They were small rooms, with
small furniture. They were old-fashioned rooms, with low ceilings, and
queer cupboards nestling in out-of-the-way holes and corners: and Mr.
Carter had enough work to do in squeezing himself into the interior of
these receptacles, which all smelt, more or less, of chandlery and
rum,—that truly seaman-like spirit having been a favourite beverage
with the late inhabitant of the cottage.
After examining half-a-dozen cupboards in the lower regions, Mr. Carter
and his guide ascended to the upper story.
The girl called Betsy ushered the detective into a bedroom, which she
said was her master's, and where the occupation of the Major was made
manifest by divers articles of apparel lying on the chairs and hanging
on the pegs, and, furthermore, by a powerful effluvium of stale
tobacco, and a collection of pipes and cigar-boxes on the
chimney-piece.
The girl opened the door of an impossible-looking little cupboard in a
corner behind a four-post bed; but instead of inspecting the cupboard,
Mr. Carter made a sudden rush at the door, locked it, and then put the
key in his pocket.
"No, thank you, Miss Innocence," he said; "I don't crick my neck, or
break my back, by looking into any more of your cupboards. Just you
come here."
"Here," was the window, before which Mr. Carter planted himself.
The girl obeyed very quietly. She would have been a pretty-looking girl
but for her toothache, or rather, but for the coloured handkerchief
which muffled the lower part of her face, and was tied in a knot at the
top of her head. As it was, Mr. Carter could only see that she had
pretty brown eyes, which shifted left and right as he looked at her.
"Oh, yes, you're an artful young hussy, and no mistake," he said; "and
that toothache's only a judgment upon you. What was that your master
said to you in the parlour just now, eh? What was that he told you to
hold your tongue about, eh?"
Betty shook her head, and began to twist the corner of her apron in her
hands.
"Master didn't say nothing, sir," she said.
"Master didn't say nothing! Your morals and your grammar are about a
match, Miss Betsy; but you'll find yourself rather in the wrong box
by-and-by, my young lady, when you find yourself committed to prison
for perjury; which crime, in a young female, is transportation for
life," added Mr. Carter, in an awful tone.
"Oh, sir!" cried Betty, "it isn't me; it's master: and he do swear so
when he's in his tantrums. If the 'taters isn't done to his likin',
sir, he'll grumble about them quite civil at first, and then he'll work
hisself up like, and take and throw them at me one by one, and his
language gets worse with every 'tater. Oh, what am I to do, sir! I
daren't go against him. I'd a'most sooner be transported, if it don't
hurt much."
"Don't hurt much!" exclaimed Mr. Carter; "why, there's a ship-load of
cat-o'-nine-tails goes out to Van Diemen's Land every quarter, and
reserved specially for young females!"
"Oh! I'll tell you all about it, sir," cried Mr. Vernon's housemaid;
"sooner than be took up for perjuring, I'll tell you everything."
"I thought so," said Mr. Carter; "but it isn't much you've got to tell
me. Mr. Dunbar came here this morning on horseback, between five and
six?"
"It was ten minutes past six, sir, and I was opening the shutters."
"Precisely."
"And the gentleman came on horseback, sir, and was nigh upon fainting
with the pain of his leg; and he sent me to call up master, and master
helped him off the horse, and took the horse to the stable; and then
the gentleman sat and rested in master's little parlour at the back of
the house; and then they sent me for a fly, and I went to the Rose and
Crown at Lisford, and fetched a fly; and before eight o'clock the
gentleman went away."
Before eight, and it was now past three. Mr. Carter looked at his watch
while the girl made her confession.
"And, oh, please don't tell master as I told you," she said; "oh,
please don't, sir."
There was no time to be lost, and yet the detective paused for a
minute, thinking of what he had just heard.
Had the girl told him the truth; or was this a story got up to throw
him off the scent? The girl's terror of her master seemed genuine. She
was crying now, real tears, that streamed down her pale cheeks, and
wetted the handkerchief that covered the lower part of her face.
"I can find out at the Rose and Crown whether anybody did go away in a
fly," the detective thought.
"Tell your master I've searched the place, and haven't found his
friend," he said to the girl; "and that I haven't got time to wish him
good morning."
The detective said this as he went down stairs. The girl went into the
little rustic porch with him, and directed him to the Rose and Crown at
Lisford.
He ran almost all the way to the little inn; for he was growing
desperate now, with the idea that his man had escaped him.
"Why, he can do anything with such a start," he thought to himself.
"And yet there's his lameness—that'll go against him."
At the Rose and Crown Mr. Carter was informed that a fly had been
ordered at seven o'clock that morning by a young person from Woodbine
Cottage; that the vehicle had not long come in, and that the driver was
somewhere about the stables. The driver was summoned at Mr. Carter's
request, and from him the detective ascertained that a gentleman,
wrapped up to the very nose, and wearing a coat lined with fur, and
walking very lame, had been taken up by him at Woodbine Cottage. This
gentleman had ordered the driver to go as fast as he could to
Shorncliffe station; but on reaching the station, it appeared the
gentleman was too late for the train he wanted to go by, for he came
back to the fly, limping awful, and told the man to drive to Maningsly.
The driver explained to Mr. Carter that Maningsly was a little village
three miles from Shorncliffe, on a by-road. Here the gentleman in the
fur coat had alighted at an ale-house, where he dined, and stopped,
reading the paper and drinking hot brandy-and-water till after one
o'clock. He acted altogether quite the gentleman, and paid for the
driver's dinner and brandy-and-water, as well as his own. At half-after
one he got into the fly, and ordered the man to go back to Shorncliffe
station. At five minutes after two he alighted at the station, where he
paid and dismissed the driver.
This was all Mr. Carter wanted to know.
"You get a fresh horse harnessed in double-quick time," he said, "and
drive me to Shorncliffe station."
While the horse and fly were being got ready, the detective went into
the bar, and ordered a glass of steaming brandy-and-water. He was
accustomed to take liquids in a boiling state, as the greater part of
his existence was spent in hurrying from place to place, as he was
hurrying now.
"Sawney's got the chance this time," he thought. "Suppose he was to
sell me, and go in for the reward?"
The supposition was not a pleasant one, and Mr. Carter looked grave for
a minute or so; but he quickly relapsed into a grim smile.
"I think Sawney knows me too well for that," he said; "I think Sawney
is too well acquainted with me to try _that_ on."
The fly came round to the inn-door while Mr. Carter reflected upon
this. He sprang into the vehicle, and was driven off to the station.
At the Shorncliffe station he found everything very quiet. There was no
train due for some time yet; there was no sign of human life in the
ticket-office or the waiting-rooms.
There was a porter asleep upon his truck on the platform, and there was
one solitary young female sitting upon a bench against the wall, with
her boxes and bundles gathered round her, and an umbrella and a pair of
clogs on her lap.
Upon all the length of the platform there was no sign of Mr. Tibbles,
otherwise Sawney Tom.
Mr. Carter awoke the porter, and sent him to the station-master to ask
if any letter addressed to Mr. Henry Carter had been left in that
functionary's care. The porter went yawning to make this inquiry, and
came back by-and-by, still yawning, to say that there was such a
letter, and would the gentleman please step into the station-master's
office to claim and receive it.
The note was not a long one, nor was it encumbered by any ceremonious
phraseology.
_"Gent in furred coat turned up 2.10, took a ticket for Derby, 1 class,
took ticket for same place self, 2 class.—Yrs to commd, T.T."_
Mr. Carter crumpled up the note and dropped it into his pocket. The
station-master gave him all the information about the trains. There was
a train for Derby at seven o'clock that evening; and for the three and
a half weary hours that must intervene, Mr. Carter was left to amuse
himself as best he might.
"Derby," he muttered to himself, "Derby. Why, he must be going north;
and what, in the name of all that's miraculous, takes him that way?"