“I’m the agent for the property,” he said, “I heard you were looking it over, so I came across. We’re ready to put it in good shape for any desirable tenant. There’s few better stable properties in the Chelsea mews.”
“Really,” said Tom, “I’m not sure whether this will meet my needs or not. We’ve just been looking things over and came upon this sign. It must have received a pretty severe blow, for every screw is out of it.”
“Well, sir,” said the agent eagerly, “that’s the very strangest thing I ever saw. I saw the sign go down,—I was just across the yard here in that corner, and I happened to be looking out through the archway. There was no wind, not a breath of air stirring, and yet, all of a sudden, the old sign tumbled. A man had gone by not a minute before. It might just as well hit him as not, or hit me, for that matter. And the pole that held it, and the nails and hinges and everything must have flown out of it when it struck. Least, I don’t see what else could have happened to ’em. They weren’t there when I came along, and they were good iron, too. I looked that sign over, myself, inside of two months, to make sure things were all right.”
Our voluble friend stopped for breath. As Tom addressed him, I spoke in an aside to Dorothy.
“I always supposed years ago that the English were the most silent race on earth, but I’m finding out my mistake now. It’s the upper classes that are silent and the country people. Your Londoner can talk a blue streak, once he gets going.”
Tom had stepped out into the yard with the agent to give us a further chance to look over the sign, and we were just about to make another examination of the nail holes, when Tom sung out to us, “Come out here, will you?”
Out we came, to see the agent hurrying away and Tom, with key in hand, ready to lock up.
“I really believe we’ve got something, this time,” he said, in a low voice. “It seems this chap is an understrapper of the agent of the Duke of Moir, who owns all this property about here. He tells me that he let three rooms to a man named Cragent, who occupied them as a workshop or a laboratory off and on for some months, and left about two days ago. Sometimes he’d be gone for months at a time. The man’s gone off for the keys now. He’s going to let us go through the place. He tells me that Cragent probably made some changes, though he hasn’t been inside the place yet.”
Tom ended, the agent returned with the keys, and we followed on. Just beyond the mews on the adjoining street, the agent mounted some stairs beside a little bakeshop.
The red-whiskered man slipped a key in the lock and threw open the door. Eagerly we pressed in. The bare rooms showed some slight litter left by their former occupant, wrapping paper, broken bits of insulated wire, a shelf which showed behind it heavy disconnected wires which must have led to a motor generator, a sink with high goose neck tap.