"Yes, sir."
Brent was going forward, but a sudden curiosity seized on him. He paused, glancing at the policeman suggestively.
"Did—did Mr. Crood say anything?" he asked.
The policeman shook his head.
"Nothing, sir, except that he supposed Superintendent Hawthwaite was seeing to everything."
"Did you happen to tell him that I was here?"
"I did, sir; I said his Worship's cousin from London had just come. No harm, sir, I hope?"
"Not a bit—glad you did," said Brent. "He'll expect me."
He said good night to the man and walked forward to Alderman Crood's door. It was like the house to which it gave entrance—very high and broad, a massive affair, topped by a glass transom, behind which a light, very dim and feeble, was burning. Brent felt for and rang a bell, and heard it ring somewhere far off in the house. Then he waited; waited so long that he was about to ring again, when he heard a bolt being withdrawn inside the big door; then another. Each creaked in a fashion that suggested small use, and the need of a little oil. The door opened, and he found himself confronting a girl, who stood holding a small lamp in her hand; behind her, at the far end of a gloomy, cavernous hall a swinging lamp, turned low, silhouetted her figure.
Something about the girl made Brent look at her with more attention than he would ordinarily have given. She was a tallish girl, whose figure would have been unusually good had it been properly filled out; as it was, she was thin, but only too thin for her proportions—her thinness, had she been three inches shorter, would have passed for a graceful slenderness. But Brent took this in at a glance; his attention was more particularly concentrated on the girl's face—a delicate oval, framed in a mass of dark hair. She was all dark—dark hair, an olive complexion, large, unusually lustrous dark eyes, fringed by long soft lashes, an almost dark rose-tint on her cheeks. And in the look which she gave him there was something as soft as her eyes, which were those of a shy animal—something appealing, pathetic. He glanced hastily at her attire—simple, even to plainness—and wondered who she was, and what was her exact status in that big house, which seemed to require the services of a staff of domestics.