So far as she could judge the house was deserted. The dingy first floor smelt horribly of cheap, stale, cigar smoke. The sordidness of the whole thing struck Mary with peculiar and unpleasant force. It was all so totally different to what she had been accustomed to. She wondered where Mrs. Speed was to be found.
Then voices came from the dining-room, voices raised in anger. A man and a woman there were quarrelling violently. It seemed to Mary that the man's voice was familiar to her, but she could not be quite certain as yet.
She made up her mind to go down into the basement--the dark, warm basement that seemed to reek with the ghastly smells of bygone meals. Mary wondered how people could live in an atmosphere like that. She was standing in doubt at the head of the kitchen stairs when from the dining-room she heard her own name.
There was no mistaking the allusion to Dashwood. Quite naturally Mary stood to listen. It was the man in the dining-room who was speaking.
"I tell you I must have it," he said. "What reason have you got to be fond of the name of Dashwood? It never brought us any good. If Ralph Dashwood had not been a fool, and you had played your cards right, you might be living at the dower house now, with a handsome income and a staff of servants to wait upon you."
The woman made some kind of reply that Mary could not quite catch, though she knew by the choke in the voice that she was sobbing. The man resumed.
"I tell you I must have it," he said. "No use to tell me that you haven't got the letters; for I have seen them in your possession. It's a letter sent from Lady Dashwood to her son and the date is 9th September, 1884. Now you make a note of that, please. If I don't have it, I shall find myself in serious trouble. What game am I playing? I'm playing for more money than you ever dreamed of."
"Money!" the woman said bitterly, "that is always your cry. But it has not prevented you from taking all mine. And I owe three quarters' rent, which has to be paid tomorrow. If it isn't paid tomorrow, I shall be sold up and turned into the street."