The lady looked at them. “Yes,” she said, “this pattern of shoe is made especially for me. I do not think you can buy them at other places.”
“‘THIS PATTERN OF SHOE IS MADE ESPECIALLY FOR ME.’”
“Then may I ask you to inquire from your assistants if any were sold on Monday, and to whom?”
“Certainly.” Then there were consultations behind counters and desks, and examinations of carbon-papered books. In the end the proprietress came to Hewitt, followed by a young lady of rather pert and self-confident aspect. “We find,” she said, “that two pairs of these shoes were sold on Monday. But one pair was afterwards brought back and exchanged for others less expensive. This young lady sold both.”
“Ah, then possibly she may remember something of the person who bought the pair which was not exchanged.”
“Yes,” the assistant answered at once, addressing herself to the lady, “it was Mrs. Butcher’s servant.”
The proprietress frowned slightly. “Oh, indeed,” she said, “Mrs. Butcher’s servant, was it? There have been inquiries about Mrs. Butcher before, I believe, though not here. Mrs. Butcher is a woman who takes babies to mind, and is said to make a trade of adopting them, or finding people anxious to adopt them. I know nothing of her, nor do I want to. She lives somewhere not far off, and you can get her address, I believe, from the greengrocer’s round the corner.”
“Does she keep more than one servant?”
“Oh, I think not; but no doubt the greengrocer can say.” The lady seemed to feel it an affront that she should be supposed to know anything of Mrs. Butcher, and Hewitt consequently started for the greengrocer’s. Now this was just one of those cases in which dependence on information given by other people put Hewitt on the wrong scent. He spent that day in a fatiguing pursuit of Mrs. Butcher’s servant, with adventures rather amusing in themselves, but quite irrelevant to the Seton case. In the end, when he had captured her, and proceeded to open a cunning battery of inquiries, under plea of a bet with a friend that the shoes could not be matched, he soon found that she had been the purchaser who, after buying just such a pair of shoes, had returned and exchanged them for something cheaper. And the only outcome of his visit to the baby-linen shop was the waste of a day. It was indeed just one of those checks which, while they may hamper the progress of a narrative for popular reading, are nevertheless inseparable from the matter-of-fact experience of Hewitt’s profession.