XXIII
CONVERGING ROADS
Matthew Broffin had been two weeks and half of a third an unobtrusive spy upon the collective activities of the Wahaskan social group which included the Farnhams before he decided that nothing more could be gained by further delay.
By this time he knew all there was to be known about Miss Farnham; the houses she visited, the somewhat limited circle of her intimates and the vastly wider one of her acquaintances, her comings and goings in the town, her preference for church dissipations over the other sort, and for croquet over lawn tennis.
Also, he had a more minute knowledge which would have terrified her if she had suspected that any strange man was keeping an accurately tabulated note-book record of her waking employments. He knew at what hour she breakfasted, what time in the forenoons she spent upon her Chautauqua readings, how much of her day was given to the care of her invalid aunt, and, most important item of all, how, in the afternoons, when her father was at his town office and the invalid was taking a nap in her room, Miss Charlotte was usually alone in the living-rooms of the two-storied house in Lake Boulevard: practically so for four days out of the seven; actually so on Wednesdays and Fridays when Hilda Larsen, the Swedish maid of all work, had her afternoons off.
Having his own private superstition about Friday, Broffin chose a Wednesday afternoon for his call at the house on the lake front. It was a resplendent day of the early summer which, in the Minnesota latitudes, springs, Minerva-like, full-grown from the nodding head of the wintry Jove of the north. In the doctor's front yard the grass was vividly green, gladioli and jonquils bordered the path with a bravery of color, and the buds of the clambering rose on the porch trellis were swelling to burst their calyxes.
Broffin turned in from the sidewalk and closed the gate noiselessly behind him. If he saw the bravery of colors in the path borders it was only with the outward eye. There was a faint stir on the porch, as of some one parting the leafy screen to look out, but he neither quickened his pace nor slowed it. While he had been three doors away in the lake-fronting street, a small pocket binocular had assured him that the young woman he was going to call upon was sitting in a porch rocker behind the clambering rose, reading a book.
She had risen to meet him by the time he had mounted the steps, and he knew that her first glance was appraisive. He had confidently counted upon being mistaken for a strange patient in search of the doctor, and he was not disappointed.
"You are looking for Doctor Farnham?" she began. "He is at his office—201 Main Street."