CHAPTER II
I happened to be lodging in the house of Mrs. Smith, an old widow, whom I had known in Scotland. I came and went just as I liked, having a key of the front door. I managed to keep my occupation very dark. When I was new to the trade I thought of telling the landlady who I was, for she was a discreet body; but I remembered just in time that women's tongues are hung on so fine a balance they cannot help wagging and flopping out any secret—being anxious to unload and take in fresh cargo. If they have no better listeners, they will whisper to a bird of the air, or the four winds. I come from too far north to trust a woman with a secret, so I did not tell Mrs. Smith I was a detective. There is only one woman I tell secrets to, and that is my wife. If I did not tell her, she would get them out of me, so I make a virtue of necessity. Confession is good for the soul.
It began to rain cats and dogs, or more like elephants and rhinoceroses, for it came down heavy. The street gutters ran like rivers, and joined each other in the middle of the road, shaking hands, bobbing, courtesying, and carrying all the floatable rubbish to the Yarra. The only living things I saw were half a dozen fowls of some sort, splashing themselves and ducking in the water. The windows were so blurred I could not make out what they were till I heard them say "Quack!" "A fine day," I said to myself, "for ducks, geese, and detectives." The wetter the day the surer you are of your game. It lies close on such days, and one may expect a feast of contentment when one knows it is spitted with a broad arrow on back, hip, or thigh, simmering in the jug—I mean gaol. Jugged hare, shall we say?
I determined to go out, so I put on an india-rubber coat and boots. I had never seen a detective with an umbrella, therefore I took one with me as an extra disguise and crept down stairs. The maid-of-all-work had stopped halfway, and had a pail in her hand when I came upon her unawares. She took a hasty glance at me, then fled two steps at a jump, dropping the pail at the bottom. Then she threw her apron over her head, and played blindman's-buff, till she lumbered into the kitchen and fell all of a heap.
I heard Mrs. Smith say, in a voice of alarm, "What is the matter, Mary Ann?"
There was a dead silence; Mary Ann had fainted.
I took steps—down the rest of the stairs—to make myself scarce before Mary Ann came to, so I shut the door quietly, and marched rapidly up the street, with my head buried in the umbrella. The wind nearly carried my beard away, but I held fast, and tacked to the lee side, where I made good progress. Then I walked up La Trobe Street, and made my way, across the open space, towards Collingwood.
In a quarter of an hour I was in the neighbourhood of the house I was looking for, so I called a council of war with myself, and came to a unanimous decision as to what I should do. I ran a parallel up to the place, took a flying survey through a little hole in the umbrella, and passed on; then I twirled the hole round, and took a squint at the other side of the street. Nearly opposite the house I had looked at was one with a bill in the window, on which was "House to Let." Just as Wellington took possession of the house of La Haye Sainte on the Field of Waterloo, so would I take possession of this empty domicile for strategic purposes. Two great minds may hit upon the same idea.
I turned into another street, and went down a right-of-way to the back of the empty house. Fortunately I found the gate open, so I went into the yard. It was a squalid place, full of water, dreary and wretched in the extreme. The door was locked, and the windows were latched. Should I get in at the door or window? As I usually travel by the shortest road, I thrust my hand through the glass, pulled the catch back, threw the sash up, put my leg over the sill, then jumped into the room, which was about twelve feet square. The floor was blotched and greasy, the walls damp and frowsy, with great strips of paper hanging down at the ceiling. I shut the window, but left it unfastened, then unlocked the door, and opened it a few inches to leave a way of retreat in case of need. If worsted by the enemy (which may happen to the best general), retreat in good order, like Sir John Moore at Corunna, who was covered with glory, a mantle, and Westminster Abbey; or if not by the latter, he ought to have been.
I explored the four rooms, baton in hand—there was not a soul in the place; then I stood at one of the front windows, a little way back, and reconnoitred. The rain had ceased. Black masses of cloud were hurrying up from the south, and clawing at the chimney-pots. The wind howled in the lum, and whistled through the keyhole. The weatherboard walls creaked and groaned like a ship's timbers in a gale. The front gate swung on its one hinge, and grated on the gravel path. Rank weeds filled the strip of garden, and the paling fence clattered like castanets, without tune, rhyme, or reason.
I had barely noted what I have set down, when the door of the opposite house was opened a few inches, and a black eye, like a search-light, flashed to right and left. Evidently the coast was clear, and the sweep satisfactory, for the other eye hove in sight, accompanied by a face in perfect drawing and colouring, such as Sir John Millais or Marcus Stone loves to paint.
"Sold again!" I said to myself; "this is a lady and no mistake!" I was just about to beat a retreat, cover up my tracks, destroy my bridges, burn my boats, or whatever is the appropriate expression, under my crushing defeat. I ground my teeth with chagrin and hunger. It was nearly six o'clock, and in another hour it would be dark. I had no stomach for such work under the unforeseen circumstances that had developed.
The lady had a basket on her arm, which gave my thoughts a new direction. She must be on a charitable mission to the reprobate sweep who lived there, trying to whitewash him with tracts, and sweeten his life with sugar and tea. "This is the solution of the situation, no doubt," I thought. I must not desert my post, but watch. Putting my theory into practice, I glued my eyes on the lady to see what was her next move. She came out on the step, and furtively peered up and down the street with an anxious face. First impressions are not always best. I did not like her looks half so well as I did. She did not improve on closer inspection. However, everything suffers on a wet day. Beauty does not count for much, and classical features are nowhere muffled in a hood and dripping umbrella. Helen of Troy and Cleopatra did not show themselves on a rainy day.
She pulled a shawl over her head, and hid her face as well as she could, then shut the door, and walked up the street, glancing over her shoulder every second or two.
"You are no better than you ought to be," I thought. "Like a fair apple without, but with rottenness at the heart—a whited sepulchre, with foulness within. There is some secret here!"
I had changed my mind about her. She was better than her surroundings; her dress was costlier than the neighbourhood could buy. She was a false coin, which would not stand the test of a ring.
When she turned the corner of the street I let myself out by the front door, and followed her, my umbrella acting as a screen. When I reached the corner of the street she had vanished. There was a public-house a hundred yards away, into which she might have gone, so I went to it, and glanced into the bar over the frosted half of the window. A man was sitting on a barrel, playing on an asthmatical accordion, so wheezy and broken-winded it could not get through more than three bars of a tune without a rest. Three men, with pewter pots before them, were thumping some knotty arguments into a table. The lady wasn't there, evidently, so I went on, but seeing the private door ajar, I pushed it open a few inches. A jar suggests a pot of something. I was about to go in when I pulled myself up, just in time, for the lady was at a little square hole in the wall which communicated with the bar, and at that moment was slipping a bottle into her basket. On second thoughts, after watching for an opportunity, I went into the passage, and then into the parlour as if I were walking between eggs. The plot was developing. It was hatching.
In a few minutes the lady had bought what she wanted and went away, with me at her heels. I nearly trod on her skirt, so eager was I to keep her in sight. She did not go in the direction of the house she had first left, but went farther from it, probably to make more purchases. When she was at a safe distance I followed. There she turned into a shop, which I knew was a grocer's when I saw some soap boxes on the pavement, and a swinging sign with a big T and a teapot on it, so that the lettered might read and the unlettered might see what was sold within. A grocer's shop is like a salmon basket, having only one way out. Not like a public-house, whose ways in and out are many and crooked. The lady must come out sometime, so I could wait. I went into a right-of-way, and showed about a hair-breadth of my right eye in the direction of the shop.
When my patience was nearly all jettisoned I heard the sharp ting of a bell, and the lady came out of the shop. She was coming my way. I suddenly became absorbed in searching for an imaginary copper, which any one might suppose I was groping for in the gutter; my back toward the mouth of the right-of-way, my big body sticking in its gullet, my head nearly touching the water, while my telescopic eyes watched between my ankles for the transit of Venus.
When the blood had all run to my head, and my heart was throbbing like a water-lifter, the lady made her appearance, and gave a start when she saw me in this extraordinary attitude. She stared and better stared, and would have looked me out of countenance if there had been more of it visible. I was in a downright dilemma. When she had satisfied her curiosity she went on, and I slowly became an upright detective, or as nearly so as the business will allow.
I reached the end of the right-of-way as quickly as I could, and looked down the street, expecting to see the woman (I drop the term lady, for I was beginning to take her down a peg), but did not see her. She could not have reached the corner at a walking pace. She must have run like the wind. Perhaps she thought I was a madman, and would chase her.
"All right," I said, "I can run as fast as you," so I stretched myself, like a piece of india-rubber, and bounded along till I drew myself in at the corner. She was nowhere to be seen. There wasn't a figure in the landscape. She was rubbed out of the drawing—erased, by Jove!