many people have been surprised at the information that, in all martin hewitt’s wide and busy practice, the matrimonial cases whereon he has been engaged have been comparatively few. that he has had many important cases of the sort is true, but among the innumerable cases of different descriptions they make a small percentage. the reason is that so many of the persons wishing to consult him on such concerns were actuated by mere unreasoning or fanciful jealousy that hewitt would do no more in their cases than urge reconciliation and mutual trust, the common “private inquiry” offices chiefly flourish on this class of case, and their proprietors present no particular reluctance to taking it up. in any event it means fees for consultation and “watching”; and recent newspaper reports have made it plain that among some of the less scrupulous agents a case may be manufactured from beginning to end according to order. again, hewitt had a distaste for the sort of work commonly involved in matrimonial troubles; and with the immense amount of business brought to him, rendering necessary his rejection of so many commissions, it was easy for him to avoid what went against his inclinations. still, as i have said, matrimonial cases there were, and often of an interesting nature, taking rise in no fanciful nor unreasoning jealousy.

when, on its change of proprietorship, i accepted my appointment on the paper that now claims me, i had a week or two’s holiday pending the final turning over of the property. i could not leave town, for i might have been wanted at any moment, but i made an absorbing and instructive use of my leisure as an amateur assistant to hewitt. i sat in his office much of the time, and saw more of the daily routine of his work than i had ever done before; and i was present at one or two interviews that initiated cases that afterwards developed striking features. one of these—which indeed i saw entirely through before i resumed my more legitimate work—was the case of mr. and mrs. geldard.

hewitt had stepped out for a few minutes, and i was sitting alone in his private room, when i became conscious of some disturbance in the outer office. an excited female voice was audible making impatient inquiries. presently kerrett, hewitt’s clerk, came in with the message that a lady—mrs. geldard was the name on the visitor’s slip that she had filled up—was anxious to see mr. hewitt, at once, and failing himself, had decided to see me, whom kerrett had calmly taken it upon himself to describe as hewitt’s confidential assistant. he apologised for this, and explained that he thought, as the lady seemed excited, it would be as well to let her see me to begin with, if there was no objection, and perhaps she would begin to be coherent and intelligible by hewitt’s arrival, which might occur at any moment. so the lady was shown in. she was tall, bony, and severe of face, and she began as soon as she saw me: “i’ve come to get you to get a watch set on my husband. i’ve endured this sort of thing in silence long enough. i won’t have it. i’ll see if there’s no protection to be had for a woman treated as i am—with his goings out all day ‘on business’ when his office is shut up tight all the time. i wanted to see mr. hewitt himself, but i suppose you’ll do, for the present at any rate though i’ll have it sifted to the bottom and get the best advice to be had, no matter what it costs though i am only a woman with nobody to confide in or to speak a word for me and i’m not going to be crushed like a fly as i’ll soon let him know.”

here i seized a short opportunity to offer mrs. geldard a chair, and to say that i expected mr. hewitt in a few minutes.

“very well, i’ll wait and see him. but you have to do with the watching business, no doubt, and you’ll understand what it is i want done; and i’m sure i’m justified, and mean to sift it to the bottom, whatever happens. am i to be kept in total ignorance of what my husband does all day when he is supposed to be at business? is it likely i should submit to that?”

i said i didn’t think it likely at all, which was a fact. mrs. geldard appeared to be about the least submissive woman i ever saw.

“no, and i won’t, that’s more. nice goings on somewhere, no doubt, with his office shut up all day and the business going to ruin. i want you to watch him. i want you to follow him to-morrow morning and find out all he does and let me know. i’ve followed him myself this morning and yesterday morning, but he gets away somehow from the back of his office, and i can’t watch on two staircases at once, so i want you to come and do it, and i’ll—”

here fortunately hewitt’s arrival checked mrs. geldard’s flow of speech, and i rose and introduced him. i told him shortly that the lady desired a watch to be set on her husband at his office, and a report to be given her of his daily proceedings. hewitt did not appear to accept the commission with any particular delight, but he sat down to hear his visitor’s story. “stay here, brett,” he said, as he saw my hands stretched towards the door. “we’ve an engagement presently, you know.”

the engagement, i remembered, was merely to lunch, and hewitt kept me with some notion of restricting the time which this alarming woman might be disposed to occupy. she repeated to hewitt, in the same manner, what she had already said to me, and then hewitt, seizing his first opportunity, said, “will you please tell me, mrs. geldard, definitely and concisely, what evidence, or even indication, you have of unbecoming conduct on your husband’s part, and substantially what case you wish me to take up?”

“case? why, i’ve been telling you.” and again mrs. geldard repeated her vague catalogue of sufferings, assuring hewitt that she was determined to have the best advice and assistance, and that therefore she had come to him. in the end hewitt answered: “put concisely, mrs. geldard, i take it that your case is simply this. mr. geldard is in business as, i think you told me, a general agent and broker, and keeps an office in the city. you have had various disagreements with him—not an uncommon thing, unfortunately, between married people—and you have entertained certain indefinite suspicions of his behaviour. yesterday you went so far as to go to his office soon after he should have been there, and found him absent and the office shut up. you waited some time, and called again, but the door was still locked, and the caretaker of the building assured you that mr. geldard usually kept his office thus shut. you knocked repeatedly, and called through the keyhole, but got no answer. this morning you even followed your husband and saw him enter his office; but when, a little later, you yourself attempted to enter it, you once more found it locked and apparently tenantless. from this you conclude that he must have left his rooms by some back way, and you say you are determined to find out where he goes and what he does during the day. for this purpose you, i gather, wish me to watch him and report his whole day’s proceedings to you?”

“yes, of course; as i said.”

“i’m afraid the state of my other engagements just at present will scarcely admit of that. indeed, to speak quite frankly, this mere watching, especially of husband or wife, is not a sort of business that i care to undertake, except as a necessary part of some definite, tangible case. but apart from that, will you allow me to advise you? not professionally, i mean, but merely as a man of the world. why come to third parties with these vague suspicions? family divisions of this sort, with all sorts of covert mistrust and suspicion, are bad things at best, and once carried as far as you talk of carrying this, go beyond peaceable remedy. why not deal frankly and openly with your husband? why not ask him plainly what he has been doing during the days you were unable to get into his office? you will probably find it all capable of a very simple and innocent explanation.”

“am i to understand, then,” mrs. geldard said, bridling, “that you refuse to help me?”

“i have not refused to help you,” hewitt replied. “on the contrary, i am trying to help you now. did your husband ever follow any other profession than the one he is now engaged in?”

“once he was a mechanical engineer, but he got very few clients, and it didn’t pay.”

“there, now, is a suggestion. would it be very unlikely that your husband, trained mechanician as he is, may have reverted so far to his old profession as to be conceiving some new invention? and in that case, what more probable than that he would lock himself securely in his office to work out his idea, and take no notice of visitors knocking, in order to admit nobody who might learn something of what he was doing? does he keep a clerk or office boy?”

“no, he never has since he left the mechanical engineering.”

“well, mrs. geldard, i’m sorry i have no more time now, but i must earnestly repeat my advice. come to an understanding with your husband in a straightforward way as soon as you possibly can. there are plenty of private inquiry offices about where they will watch anybody, and do almost anything, without any inquiry into their clients’ motives, and with a single eye to fees. i charge you no fee, and advise you to treat your husband with frankness.”

mrs. geldard did not seem particularly satisfied, though hewitt’s rejection of a consultation fee somewhat softened her. she left protesting that hewitt didn’t know the sort of man she had to deal with, and that, one way or another, she must have an explanation.

“come, we’ll get to lunch,” said hewitt. “i’m afraid my suggestion as to mr. geldard’s probable occupation in his office wasn’t very brilliant, but it was the pleasantest i could think of for the moment, and the main thing was to pacify the lady. one does no good by aggravating a misunderstanding of that sort.”

“can you make any conjecture,” i said, “at what the trouble really is?”

hewitt raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “there’s no telling,” he said. “an angry, jealous, pragmatical woman, apparently, this mrs. geldard, and it’s impossible to judge at first sight how much she really knows and how much she imagines. i don’t suppose she’ll take my advice. she seems to have worked herself into a state of rancour that must burst out violently somewhere. but lunch is the present business. come.”

the next day i spent at a friend’s house a little way out of town, so that it was not till the following morning, about the same time, that i learned from hewitt that mrs. geldard had called again.

“yes,” he said; “she seems to have taken my advice in her own way, which wasn’t a judicious one. when i suggested that she should speak frankly to her husband, i meant her to do it in a reasonably amicable mood. instead of that, she appears to have flown at his throat, so to speak, with all the bitterness at her tongue’s disposal. the natural result was a row. the man slanged back, the woman threatened divorce, and the man threatened to leave the country altogether. and so yesterday mrs. geldard was here again to get me to follow and watch him. i had to decline once more, and got something rather like a slanging myself for my pains. she seemed to think i was in league with her husband in some way. in the end i promised—more to get rid of her than anything else—to take the case in hand if ever there were anything really tangible to go upon; if her husband really did desert her, you know, or anything like that. if, in fact, there were anything more for me to consider than these spiteful suspicions.”

“i suppose,” i said, “she had nothing more to tell you than she had before?”

“very little. she seems to have startled geldard, however, by a chance shot. it seems that she once employed a maid, whom she subsequently dismissed, because, as she tells me, the young woman was a great deal too good-looking, and because she observed, or fancied she observed, signs of some secret understanding between her maid and her husband. moreover, it was her husband who discovered this maid and introduced her into the house, and furthermore, he did all he could to induce mrs. geldard not to dismiss her. he even hinted that her dismissal might cause serious trouble, and mrs. geldard says it is chiefly since this maid has left the house that his movements have become so mysterious. well it seems that in the heat of yesterday’s quarrel mrs. geldard, quite at random, asked tauntingly how many letters geldard had received from emma trennatt lately—emma trennatt was the girl’s name. this chance shot seemed to hit the target. geldard (so his wife tells me, at any rate) winced visibly, paled a little, and dodged the question. but for the rest of the quarrel he appeared much less at ease, and made more than one attempt to find out how much his wife really knew of the correspondence she had spoken of. but as her reference to it was of course the wildest possible fluke, he got little guidance, while his better-half waxed savage in her triumph, and they parted on wild-cat terms. she came straight here, and evidently thought that after geldard’s reception of her allusion to correspondence with emma trennatt—which she seemed to regard as final and conclusive confirmation of all her jealousies—i should take the case in hand at once. when she found me still disinclined, she gave me a trifling sample of her rhetoric, as no doubt commonly supplied to mr. geldard. she said in effect that she had only come to me because she meant having the best assistance possible, but that she didn’t think much of me after all, and one man was as bad as another, and so on. i think she was a trifle angrier because i remained calm and civil. and she went away this time without the least reference to a consultation fee one way or another.”

3-1

“signs of some secret understanding.”

i laughed. “probably,” i said, “she went off to some agent who’ll watch as long as she likes to pay.”

“quite possibly.” but we were quite wrong. hewitt took his hat, and we made for the staircase. as we opened the landing-door there were hurried feet on the stairs below, and as it shut behind mrs. geldard’s bonnet-load of pink flowers hove up before us. she was in a state of fierce alarm and excitement that had oddly enough something of triumph in it, as of the woman who says, “i told you so.” hewitt gave a tragic groan under his breath.

“here’s a nice state of things i’m in for now, mr. hewitt,” she began abruptly, “through your refusing to do anything for me while there was time though i was ready to pay you well as i told your young man but no, you wouldn’t listen to anything, and seemed to think you knew my business better than i could tell you and now you’ve caused this state of affairs by delay perhaps you’ll take the case in hand now?”

“but you haven’t told me what has happened—” hewitt began, whereat the lady instantly rejoined, with a shrill pretence of a laugh, “happened? why, what do you suppose has happened after what i have told you over and over again? my precious husband’s gone clean away, that’s all. he’s deserted me and gone nobody knows where. that’s what’s happened. you said that if he did anything of that sort you’d take the case up; so now i’ve come to see if you’ll keep your promise. not that it’s likely to be of much use now.”

we turned back into hewitt’s private office, and mrs. geldard told her story. disentangled from irrelevances, repetitions, opinions and incidental observations, it was this. after the quarrel geldard had gone to business as usual, and had not been seen nor heard of since. after her yesterday’s interview with hewitt, mrs. geldard had called at her husband’s office and found it shut as before. she went home again, and waited, but he never returned home that evening, nor all night. in the morning she had gone to the office once more, and finding it still shut, had told the caretaker that her husband was missing, and insisted on his bringing his own key and opening it for her inspection. nobody was there, and mrs. geldard was astonished to find folded and laid on a cupboard shelf the entire suit of clothes that her husband had worn when he left home on the morning of the previous day. she also found in the waste-paper basket the fragments of two or three envelopes addressed to her husband, which she brought for hewitt’s inspection. they were in the handwriting of the girl trennatt, and with them mrs. geldard had discovered a small fragment of one of the letters, a mere scrap, but sufficient to show part of the signature “emma,” and two or three of a row of crosses running beneath, such as are employed to represent kisses. these things she had brought with her.

hewitt examined them slightly, and then asked, “can i have a photograph of your husband, mrs. geldard?”

she immediately produced, not only a photograph of her husband, but also one of the girl trennatt, which she said belonged to the cook. hewitt complimented her on her foresight. “and now,” he said, “i think we’ll go and take a look at mr. geldard’s office, if we may. of course i shall follow him up now.” hewitt made a sign to me, which i interpreted as asking whether i would care to accompany him. i assented with a nod, for the case seemed likely to be interesting.

i omit most of mrs. geldard’s talk by the way, which was almost ceaseless, mostly compounded of useless repetition, and very tiresome.

the office was on a third floor in a large building in finsbury pavement. the caretaker made no difficulty in admitting us. there were two rooms, neither very large, and one of them at the back very small indeed. in this was a small locked door.

“that leads on to the small staircase, sir,” the caretaker said in response to hewitt’s inquiry. “the staircase leads down to the basement, and it ain’t used much ‘cept by the cleaners.”

“if i went down this back staircase,” hewitt pursued, “i suppose i should have no difficulty in gaining the street?”

“not a bit, sir. you’d have to go a little way round to get into finsbury pavement, but there’s a passage leads straight from the bottom of the stairs out to moorfields behind.”

“yes,” remarked mrs. geldard bitterly, when the caretaker had left the room, “that’s the way he’s been leaving the office every day, and in disguise, too.” she pointed to the cupboard where her husband’s clothes lay. “pretty plain proof that he was ashamed of his doings, whatever they were.”

“come, come,” hewitt answered deprecatingly, “we’ll hope there’s nothing to be ashamed of—at any rate till there’s proof of it. there’s no proof as yet that your husband has been disguising. a great many men who rent offices, i believe, keep dress clothes at them—i do it myself—for convenience in case of an unexpected invitation, or such other eventuality. we may find that he returned here last night, put on his evening dress, and went somewhere dining. illness, or fifty accidents, may have kept him from home.”

but mrs. geldard was not to be softened by any such suggestion, which i could see hewitt had chiefly thrown out by way of pacifying the lady, and allaying her bitterness as far as he could, in view of a possible reconciliation when things were cleared up.

“that isn’t very likely,” she said. “if he kept a dress suit here openly, i should know of it; and if he kept it here unknown to me, what did he want it for? if he went out in dress clothes last night, who did he go with? who do you suppose, after seeing those envelopes and that piece of the letter?”

“well, well, we shall see,” hewitt replied. “may i turn out the pockets of these clothes?”

“certainly; there’s nothing in them of importance,” mrs. geldard said. “i looked before i came to you.”

nevertheless hewitt turned them out. “here is a cheque-book with a number of cheques remaining. no counterfoils filled in, which is awkward. bankers, the london amalgamated. we will call there presently. an ivory pocket paper-knife. a sovereign purse—empty.” hewitt placed the articles on the table as he named them. “gold pencil case, ivory folding rule, russia-leather card-case.” he turned to mrs. geldard. “there is no pocket-book,” he said, “no pocket-knife and no watch, and there are no keys. did mr. geldard usually carry any of these things?”

“yes,” mrs. geldard replied, “he carried all four.” hewitt’s simple, methodical calmness, and his plain disregard of her former volubility, appeared by this to have disciplined mrs. geldard into a businesslike brevity and directness of utterance.

“as to the watch now. can you describe it?”

“oh, it was only a cheap one. he had a gold one stolen—or at any rate he told me so—and since then he has only carried a very common sort of silver one, without a chain.”

“the keys?”

“i only know there was a bunch of keys. some of them fitted drawers and bureaux at home, and others, i suppose, fitted locks in this office.”

“what of the pocket-knife?”

“that was a very uncommon one. it was a present, as a matter of fact, from an engineering friend, who had had it made specially. it was large, with a tortoise-shell handle and a silver plate with his initials. there was only one ordinary knife-blade in it; all the other implements were small tools or things of that kind. there was a small pair of silver calipers, for instance.”

“like these?” hewitt suggested, producing those he used for measuring drawers and cabinets in search of secret receptacles.

“yes, like those. and there were folding steel compasses, a tiny flat spanner, a little spirit level, and a number of other small instruments of that sort. it was very well made indeed; he used to say that it could not have been made for five pounds.”

“indeed?” hewitt cast his eyes about the two rooms. “i see no signs of books here, mrs. geldard—account-books i mean, of course. your husband must have kept account-books, i take it?”

“yes, naturally, he must have done. i never saw them, of course, but every business man keeps books.” then after a pause mrs. geldard continued: “and they’re gone too. i never thought of that. but there, i might have known as much. who can trust a man safely if his own wife can’t? but i won’t shield him. whatever he’s been doing with his clients’ money he’ll have to answer for himself. thank heaven i’ve enough to live on of my own without being dependent on a creature like him! but think of the disgrace! my husband nothing better than a common thief—swindling his clients and making away with his books when he can’t go on any longer! but he shall be punished, oh yes; i’ll see he’s punished, if once i find him!”

hewitt thought for a moment, and then asked, “do you know any of your husband’s clients, mrs. geldard?”

“no,” she answered, rather snappishly, “i don’t. i’ve told you he never let me know anything of his business—never anything at all; and very good reason he had too, that’s certain.”

“then probably you do not happen to know the contents of these drawers?” hewitt pursued, tapping the writing-table as he spoke.

“oh, there’s nothing of importance in them—at any rate in the unlocked ones. i looked at all of them this morning when i first came.”

the table was of the ordinary pedestal pattern with four drawers at each side and a ninth in the middle at the top, and of very ordinary quality. the only locked drawer was the third from the top on the left-hand side. hewitt pulled out one drawer after another. in one was a tin half full of tobacco; in another a few cigars at the bottom of a box; in a third a pile of notepaper headed with the address of the office, and rather dusty; another was empty; still another contained a handful of string. the top middle drawer rather reminded me of a similar drawer of my own at my last newspaper office, for it contained several pipes; but my own were mostly briars, whereas these were all clays.

“there’s nothing really so satisfactory,” hewitt said, as he lifted and examined each pipe by turn, “to a seasoned smoker as a well-used clay. most such men keep one or more of them for strictly private use.” there was nothing noticeable about these pipes except that they were uncommonly dirty, but hewitt scrutinised each before returning it to the drawer. then he turned to mrs. geldard and said: “as to the bank now—the london amalgamated, mrs. geldard. are you known there personally?”

“oh, yes; my husband gave them authority to pay cheques signed by me up to a certain amount, and i often do it for household expenses, or when he happens to be away.”

“then perhaps it will be best for you to go alone,” hewitt responded. “of course they will never, as a general thing, give any person information as to the account of a customer; but perhaps, as you are known to them, and hold your husband’s authority to draw cheques, they may tell you something. what i want to find out is, of course, whether your husband drew from the bank all his remaining balance yesterday, or any large sum. you must go alone, ask for the manager, and tell him that you have seen nothing of mr. geldard since he left for business yesterday morning. mind, you are not to appear angry, or suspicious, or anything of that sort, and you mustn’t say you are employing me to bring him back from an elopement. that will shut up the channel of information at once. hostile inquiries they’ll never answer, even by the smallest hint, except after legal injunction. you can be as distressed and as alarmed as you please. your husband has disappeared since yesterday morning, and you’ve no notion what has become of him; that is your tale, and a perfectly true one. you would like to know whether or not he has withdrawn his balance, or a considerable sum, since that would indicate whether or not his absence was intentional and premeditated.”

mrs. geldard understood and undertook to make the inquiry with all discretion. the bank was not far, and it was arranged that she should return to the office with the result.

as soon as she had left, hewitt turned to the pedestal table and probed the keyhole of the locked drawer with the small stiletto attached to his penknife. “this seems to be a common sort of lock,” he said. “i could probably open it with a bent nail. but the whole table is a cheap sort of thing. perhaps there is an easier way.”

he drew the unlocked drawer above completely out, passed his hand into the opening and felt about. “yes,” he said, “it’s just as i hoped—as it usually is in pedestal tables not of the best quality; the partition between the drawers doesn’t go more than two-thirds of the way back, and i can drop my hand into the drawer below. but i can’t feel anything there—it seems empty.”

he withdrew his hand and we tilted the whole table backward, so as to cause whatever lay in the drawers to slide to the back. this dodge was successful. hewitt reinserted his hand and withdrew it with two orderly heaps of papers, each held together by a metal clip.

the papers in each clip, on examination, proved to be all of an identical character, with the exception of dates. they were, in fact, rent receipts. those for the office, which had been given quarterly, were put back in their place with scarcely a glance, and the others hewitt placed on the table before him. each ran, apart from dates, in this fashion: “received from mr. j. cookson 15s., one month’s rent of stable at 3, dragon yard, benton street, to”—here followed the date. “also rent, feed and care of horse in own stable as agreed, ￡2.—w. gask.” the receipts were ill-written, and here and there ill-spelt. hewitt put the last of the receipts in his pocket, and returned the others to the drawer. “either,” he said, “mr. cookson is a client who gets mr. geldard to hire stables for him, which may not be likely, or mr. geldard calls himself mr. cookson when he goes driving—possibly with miss trennatt. we shall see.”

the pedestal table put in order again, hewitt took the poker and raked in the fireplace. it was summer, and behind the bars was a sort of screen of cartridge paper with a frilled edge, and behind this various odds and ends had been thrown—spent matches, trade circulars crumpled up, and torn paper. there were also the remains of several cigars, some only half smoked, and one almost whole. the torn paper hewitt examined piece by piece, and finally sorted out a number of pieces, which he set to work to arrange on the blotting pad. they formed a complete note, written in the same hand as were the envelopes already found by mrs. geldard—that of the girl emma trennatt. it corresponded also with the solitary fragment of another letter which had accompanied them, by way of having a number of crosses below the signature, and it ran thus:—

tuesday night.

dear sam,—to-morrow, to carry. not late because people are coming for flowers. what you did was no good. the smoke leaks worse than ever, and f. thinks you must light a new pipe or else stop smoking altogether for a bit. uncle is anxious.

emma.

then followed the crosses, filling one line and nearly half the next—seventeen in all.

hewitt gazed at the fragments thoughtfully. “this is a find,” he said—“most decidedly a find. it looks so much like nonsense that it must mean something of importance. the date, you see, is tuesday night. it would be received here on wednesday—yesterday—morning. so that it was immediately after the receipt of this note that geldard left. it’s pretty plain the crosses don’t mean kisses. the note isn’t quite of the sort that usually carries such symbols, and moreover, when a lady fills the end of a sheet of notepaper with kisses she doesn’t stop less than half way across the last line—she fills it to the end. these crosses mean something very different. i should like, too, to know what ‘smoke’ means. anyway this letter would probably astonish mrs. geldard if she saw it. we’ll say nothing about it for the present.” he swept the fragments into an envelope, and put away the envelope in his breast pocket. there was nothing more to be found of the least value in the fireplace, and a careful examination of the office in other parts revealed nothing that i had not noticed before, so far as i could see, except geldard’s boots standing on the floor of the cupboard wherein his clothes lay. the whole place was singularly bare of what one commonly finds in an office in the way of papers, hand-books, and general business material.

mrs. geldard was not long away. at the bank she found that the manager was absent, and his deputy had been very reluctant to say anything definite without his sanction. he gave mrs. geldard to understand, however, that there was a balance still remaining to her husband’s credit; also that mr. geldard had drawn a cheque the previous morning, wednesday, for an amount “rather larger than usual.” and that was all.

“by the way, mrs. geldard,” hewitt observed, with an air of recollecting something, “there was a mr. cookson i believe, if i remember, who knew a mr. geldard. you don’t happen to know, do you, whether or not mr. geldard had a client or an acquaintance of that name?”

“no, i know nobody of the name.”

“ah, it doesn’t matter. i suppose it isn’t necessary for your husband to keep horses or vehicles of any description in his business?”

“no, certainly not.” mrs. geldard looked surprised at the question.

“of course—i should have known that. he does not drive to business, i suppose?”

“no; he goes by omnibus.”

“but as to emma trennatt now. this photograph is most welcome, and will be of great assistance, i make no doubt. but is there anything individual by which i might identify her if i saw her—anything beyond what i see in the photograph? a peculiarity of step, for instance, or a scar, or what not.”

“yes, there is a large mole—more than a quarter of an inch across, i should think—on her left cheek, an inch below the outer corner of her eye. the photograph only shows the other side of the face.”

“that will be useful to know. now has she a relative living at crouch end, or thereabout?”

“yes, her uncle; she’s living with him now—or she was at any rate till lately. but how did you know that?”

“the crouch end postmark was on those envelopes you found. do you know anything of her uncle?”

“nothing, except that he’s a nurseryman, i believe.”

“not his full address?”

“no.”

“and trennatt is his name?”

“yes.”

“thank you. i think, mrs. geldard,” hewitt said, taking his hat, “that i will set out after your husband at once. you, i think, can do no better than stay at home till i have news for you. i have your address. if anything comes to your knowledge, please telegraph it to my office at once.”

the office door was locked, the keys were left with the caretaker, and we saw mrs. geldard into a cab at the door. “come,” said hewitt, “we’ll go somewhere and look at a directory, and after that to dragon yard. i think i know a man in moorgate street who’ll let me see his directory.”

we started to walk down finsbury pavement. suddenly hewitt caught my arm and directed my eyes toward a woman who had passed hurriedly in the opposite direction. i had not seen her face, but hewitt had. “if that isn’t miss emma trennatt,” he said, “it’s uncommonly like the notion i’ve formed of her. we’ll see if she goes to geldard’s office.”

we hurried after the woman, who, sure enough, turned into the large door of the building we had just left. as it was impossible that she should know us, we followed her boldly up the stairs, and saw her stop before the door of geldard’s office, and knock. we passed her as she stood there—a handsome young woman enough—and well back on her left cheek, in the place mrs. geldard had indicated, there was plain to see a very large mole. we pursued our way to the landing above and there we stopped in a position that commanded a view of geldard’s door. the young woman knocked again and waited.

“this doesn’t look like an elopement yesterday morning, does it?” hewitt whispered. “unless geldard’s left both this one and his wife in the lurch.”

the young woman below knocked once or twice more, walked irresolutely across the corridor and back, and in the end, after a parting knock, started slowly back downstairs.

“brett,” hewitt exclaimed with suddenness, “will you do me a favour? that woman understands geldard’s secret comings and goings, as is plain from the letter. but she would appear to know nothing of where he is now, since she seems to have come here to find him. perhaps this last absence of his has nothing to do with the others. in any case, will you follow this woman? she must be watched; but i want to see to the matter in other places. will you do it?”

of course i assented at once. we had been descending the stairs as hewitt spoke, keeping distance behind the girl we were following. “thank you,” hewitt now said. “do it. if you find anything urgent to communicate, wire to me in care of the inspector at crouch end police station. he knows me, and i will call there in case you may have sent. but if it’s after five this afternoon, wire also to my office. if you keep with her to crouch end, where she lives, we shall probably meet.”

we parted at the door of the office we were at first bound for, and i followed the girl southward.

this new turn of affairs increased the puzzlement i already laboured under. here was the girl trennatt—who by all evidence appeared to be well acquainted with geldard’s mysterious proceedings, and in consequence of whose letter, whatever it might mean, he would seem to have absented himself—herself apparently ignorant of his whereabouts, and even unconscious that he had left his office. i had at first begun to speculate on geldard’s probable secret employment; i had heard of men keeping good establishments who, unknown to even their own wives, procured the wherewithal by begging or crossing-sweeping in london streets; i had heard also—knew, in fact, from hewitt’s experience—of well-to-do suburban residents whose actual profession was burglary or coining. i had speculated on the possibility of geldard’s secret being one of that kind. my mind had even reverted to the case, which i have related elsewhere, in which hewitt frustrated a dynamite explosion by his timely discovery of a baker’s cart and a number of loaves, and i wondered whether or not geldard was a member of some secret brotherhood of anarchists or fenians. but here, it would seem, were two distinct mysteries, one of geldard’s generally unaccountable movements, and another of his disappearance, each mystery complicating the other. again, what did that extraordinary note mean, with its crosses and its odd references to smoking? had the dirty clay pipes anything to do with it? or the half-smoked cigars? perhaps the whole thing was merely ridiculously trivial after all. i could make nothing of it, however, and applied myself to my pursuit of emma trennatt, who mounted an omnibus at the bank, on the roof of which i myself secured a seat.