He made a rapid step, opened the door, and imperiously beckoned the man out. Geoletti, after a moment’s hesitation, stole softly into the hall, and disappeared thence into the fog.
“H’m,” thought the doctor, returning: “victim or not, there’s been black work there. I shouldn’t grudge that knife, I think, in the ribs of one of Blague’s confederates. Like as not he’ll get it; but I’ve neither business nor inclination to interfere. So far as I’m concerned, the matter’s ended.”
* * * * * * * * *
There was a board “To Let” up before a certain house in Eaton Square. Both the board, and the house which it advertised, appeared particularly decayed and out of repair. There were even windows broken in the latter; and what with its dingy walls, and flaking stucco, and the vision of a wrecked venetian blind or two dropping forlorn slats across the inner obscurity, the house looked actually frowsy for such a neighbourhood. Thither one morning came Geoletti and stealthily examined the legend painted on the board. “Apply to Foot & Liddel, Poultry,” he read with difficulty; and straightway, or as direct as persistent inquiry and answer could help him, betook himself to the house agent’s offices in the city. He was about to enter, when his hand on the varnished door caught his attention. After an instants thought, he withdrew, bought and donned a pair of cheap woollen gloves from a shop hard by, and returned to the swing doors.
A clerk at the broad counter within accepted him with an encouraging courtesy. It was the rule at Foot & Liddels. On the principle that dirt may hold much gold in solution, unexpected affluence was often found in the most unpromising-looking customers. Grubbiness, in consequence, was no bar to the firm’s affability. The youngest employé could quote of his knowledge the instance of a would-be client, who had shed fleas on the order-book all the time he was cheapening a marble mansion in Park Lane. He had had a nose like a tapir’s, and might have been held for a first example of gold dust in deposit, if he had exhibited any sign whatever of its ever having been washed out of him.
Geoletti asked if he might have an order to view the house in Eaton Square, and was answered, “Certainly,” by the polite young gentleman whom he accosted. Here, probably enough to the auctioneering view, was one of those self-made contadini, who, like the Brothers Gatti, had turned, in the profitable processes of time, a little ice-cream shop into a gilded and bemarbled saloon. Moreover the house in Eaton Square had for long, and for some inexplicable reason, remained a drug in the market. It would be a good stroke of business to let it to an Italian parvenu.
Geoletti, being asked for his name and address, gave both glibly, without a hint of premeditation. He was Antonio Geoletti of Portland; a quarry master, he said. Not the shadow of a chuckle in himself answered to this espièglerie as he received his ticket. He looked across steadily at the young gentleman.
“Who own ze house? Who it belong to?” he asked.
“There is no tenant there at present,” said the clerk. “A Mr Dalston is the landlord.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Italian, a trifle too eagerly. “Can I see him—ze landlord—personally?”