“Tut! tut!” he said. “That ladder, now, is just placed right for a burglar! I’m sure it is! Dear me! how careless! how very careless!” He tried to measure the ladder from his remembrance of it, and, to end his doubts, returned and examined it again. The ladder rested close to a freshly painted window-sill on the first floor.
“Dear me! dear me!” said Mr. Todmorden, genuinely perturbed. “That’s the window of Miss Hartley’s room!” He stood irresolute, debating whether he should ring the bell, and point out the dangerous position of the ladder. A nervous fear of the old lady’s smile restrained him. He knew she regarded him as an old “fusser.”
He walked on again, carrying his fears.
“She is really too foolish, too foolish!” he repeated. “Living alone there—with only that stupid girl in the house! Any one might break in. They’ve only to walk up that ladder! And she will persist in advertising that she has valuables!” The occasion of the final clause in Mr. Todmorden’s mental arraignment was a particularly fine diamond brooch the old lady wore at all times, despite his protests. If there was a sentimental reason for its continual use, she concealed it under her quiet smile. The memory of that smile irritated Mr. Todmorden. “Confound her! she’s so obstinate!” His thoughts focussed themselves on that brooch, with a criminal lurking in the background. Gradually, they drifted to the criminal. As his irritation faded under the soft warm light of the sunset, he amused himself by picturing types of possible burglars. Finally, forgetting his original preoccupation, he thought of an ancestor of his own—his maternal grandfather—who had been transported for a doubtful case of murder. In contrast to that squalid page of family history self-esteem read over his own achievements. Successful, respected, an alderman, a possible knighthood in front, he had surely wiped out that black patch on his pedigree. He savoured a very pleasant sense of personal probity as he walked up the drive to his house.
He ate his solitary dinner, and revived the feeling of well-being with a bottle of his favourite port. Then Miss Hartley’s brooch recurred to his mind, and was followed by a thought of the ladder which led to it, and of a criminal who might climb the ladder. As he sat in his big chair in the lonely dining-room, gazing at passing thoughts rather than thinking them, the case of his maternal grandfather cropped up in his reverie. Moved by a sudden whim, he rose from his chair and took down a battered volume of law reports. Fortified by another glass, he read through the case of his ancestor. He finished it, and sat thoughtful for a moment before replacing the book. “H’m, h’m,” he said to himself. “Very doubtful! Very doubtful! Ah, well, we’ve travelled a long road since then!” He smiled at his own success, and went off to bed in a contented mood. That doubtful grandfather was a long way back.
In the morning, as he walked down to the station to catch his usual train, he noticed a group of people standing on the pavement and gazing up at a house. An unreasoning anxiety gripped him. He hastened his pace. Yes—surely!—it was Miss Hartley’s house which excited this unwonted interest. He arrived among the crowd, rather out of breath.
“What is it? What is it, my man?” he demanded of a gazing spectator.
Half a dozen voices replied.