“Or can it be that he has already found out from you all that he wants to know?” observed Le Sage, who was present on the occasion, with a humorous look.
“I’m sure, sir,” said Mrs. Bingley with asperity, “that he is incapable of the meanness. If you had heard him express the sentiments that I have you would never hint such a charge. No, there is some delicacy of feeling, take my word for it, at the bottom of this change in him; and I can’t help fearing that it means he has found out something fresh, something even more distressful to the family, which makes him chary of accepting its hospitality. I only hope——” she paused, with a little sigh.
“You’re thinking of Cleghorn!” broke in her master. “Damme! I’ll never believe in respectability again if that man’s done it.”
“God forbid!” said the housekeeper. “But I wish Sergeant Ridgway would appear more, and more in his old way, when he does honour me with his company.”
Her wish, however, was not to be fulfilled. The detective more and more absented himself as the days went on, and became more and more of an Asian mystery in the fleeting glimpses of his presence vouchsafed the household. Dark, taciturn, abysmal, he flitted, a casual shadow, through the labyrinthine mysteries of the crime, and could never be said to be here before an echo of his footfall was sounding in the hollows far away. A picturesque description of his processes, perhaps, but consorting in a way with the housekeeper’s fanciful rendering. Perhaps delicacy rather than expediency was the motive of his tactics; perhaps, having virtually completed his case, he was keeping out of the way until the time came to expound it; perhaps a feature of its revision was that distressful something, menacing, appalling, foreseen by the housekeeper. He had plenty otherwise to do, no doubt, in the way of collecting evidence, consulting Counsel, and so forth, which alone gave plenty of reason for neglecting the social amenities. Whatever the explanation, however, the issue was not to be long delayed.
The Baron came upon him unexpectedly one morning in the upper grounds, where the fruit gardens were, and the espaliers, and all the signs of a prosperous vegetable order. There was a fair view of the estate to be gained from that elevation, and the Sergeant appeared to be absorbed for the moment in the gracious prospect. He waited unmoving for the other to join him, and nodded as he came up.
“It’s pleasant to snatch a minute, sir,” he said, “to give to a view like this. People of my profession don’t get many such.”
“I suppose not,” answered Le Sage, “nor of a good many other professions. Proprietary views, like incomes, are very unfairly distributed, don’t you think?”
“Well, that’s so, no doubt; and among the wrong sort of people often enough.”
Le Sage laughed.