He returned to the advertisement, frowning a little, while the secretary murmured an apology. Presently he looked up, with decision.
“I will undertake,” he said, “this case in person. You will of course allow no hint of the fact to escape you.”
“Of course, Mr Balm.”
They spent the subsequent hour or two in discussing the business of the Bureau, and at two o’clock Gilead, having lunched lightly at Victoria Station, took a train thence for West Norwood.
Alighted there, and enquiring his way, he found himself in a decent suburban road, which ascended at a steepish angle between a broken double line of houses, detached or in ranks. There were terraces, some shops, many raw modern villas, a few large mansions, of an older date, standing in their own grounds, and here and there, contemporaneous with these, a detached cottage or maisonette, almost hidden behind the shrubs and foliage of its front garden. Reading Rufus Cottage upon the gate-post of one of these last, situated high on the hill, Gilead turned into a tiny drive, and rang the door bell of a little sober brown-brick house built after the sturdy architecture of the fifties. As he waited, he had time to observe that the scrap of lawn behind the shrubs was weed-grown and neglected, and the general atmosphere of the place fuscous and wet-smelling like an over-ripe walnut. And the next instant the door was opened by a weeping servant maid.
“I am sorry,” said Gilead, chivalrous to all. “Is anything the matter?”
She was small and moist, of the “tweenie” breed; and her emotion had inflamed her little nose and shaken her cap awry. She gazed at him open-mouthed, seeing an angel alighted on her step; but she answered nothing.
“I called about the advertisement,” he began tentatively; “but, of course—”
She caught at a sob to interrupt him.
“I was to show anyone in as did. O! dear, dear, I doesn’t know what to do!”