Cornish lingered a few minutes, and made the man's mind easy on this point. There are many who obtain a vast deal of information without ever asking a question, just as there are some—and they are mostly women—who ask many questions and are told many lies. Tony Cornish had a cheery way with him which made other men talk. He was also as quick as a woman. He went about the world picking up information.
The city clocks were striking seven as he walked across the Toornoifeld, where the morning mist still lingered among the trees. The great square was almost deserted. Holland, unlike France, is a lie-abed country, and at an hour when a French town would be astir and its streets already thronged with people hurrying to buy or sell at the greatest possible advantage, a Dutch city is still asleep. Park Straat was almost deserted as Cornish walked briskly down it towards the Willem's Park and Scheveningen. A few street cleaners were leisurely working, a few milkmen were hurrying from door to door, but the houses were barred and silent.
Cornish walked on the right-hand side of the road, which made it all the easier for Mrs. Vansittart to perceive him from her bedroom window as he passed Oranje Straat.
“Ah!” said that lady, and rang the bell for her maid, to whom she explained that she had a sudden desire to take a promenade this fine morning.
So Tony Cornish walked down the Oude Weg under the trees of that great thoroughfare, with Mrs. Vansittart following him leisurely by one of the side paths, which, being elevated above the road enabled her to look down upon the Englishman and keep him in sight. When he came within view of the broad road that cuts the Scheveningen wood in two and leads from the East Dunes to the West—from the Malgamite Works, in a word, to the cemetery—he sat down on a bench hidden by the trees. And Mrs. Vansittart, a hundred yards behind him, took possession of a seat as effectually concealed.
They remained thus for some time, the object of a passing curiosity to the fish-merchants journeying from Scheveningen to The Hague. Then Tony Cornish seemed to perceive something on the road towards the sea which interested him, and Mrs. Vansittart, rising from her seat, walked down to the main pathway, which commanded an uninterrupted view. That which had attracted Cornish's attention was a funeral, cheap, sordid, and obscure, which moved slowly across the Oude Weg by the road, crossing it at right angles. It was a peculiar funeral, inasmuch as it consisted of three hearses and one mourning carriage. The dead were, therefore, almost as numerous as the living, an unusual feature in civil burials. From the window of the rusty mourning coach there looked a couple of debased countenances, flushed with drink and that special form of excitement which is especially associated with a mourning coach hired on credit and a funeral beyond one's means. Behind these two faces loomed others. There seemed to be six men within the carriage.
The procession was not inspiriting, and Cornish's face was momentarily grave as he watched it. When it had passed, he rose and walked slowly back towards The Hague. Before he had gone far, he met Mrs. Vansittart face to face, who rose from a seat as he approached.
“Well, mon ami,” she asked, with a short laugh, “have you had a pleasant walk?”
“It has had a pleasant end, at all events,” he replied, meeting her glance with an imperturbable smile.
She jerked her head upwards with a little foreign gesture of indifference.