"To be thure I did!" grinned Goldmark. "Pencove Thtreet. But it'th better to dethcribe it than to name it. And don't you go tellin' no tackthy-driver to drive you in there!—cauth' there ain't room!"
Mapperley gave no answer to this piece of advice; he shot off in the direction of Victoria Street, and Hetherwick turned to the Jew.
"We'll go and have another look at this place, Goldmark," he said. "But we'll go separately—as long as we're in this street, anyway. You stroll off to that first corner, and I'll join you."
He crossed the street when the Jew had lounged away, and once more took a narrow look at the house into which the big woman had vanished. It was as close barred and curtained as ever; a veritable place of mystery. For a moment Hetherwick doubted whether he ought to leave it unwatched. But the descriptions of the wall and door in Pencove Street had excited his imagination, and he went on, turned the corner, and rejoined Goldmark. Goldmark at once went in front, piloting him into a maze of unusually dirty and crowded streets, and finally into one, narrower than the rest, on each side of which were tent-like stalls whereon all manner of cheap wares were being offered for sale by raucous-voiced vendors. He saw at once that this was one of those open-air markets of which there are many in the poorer neighbourhoods of London, and wherein you can buy a sixpenny frying-pan as readily as a paper of fried fish, and a gay neckerchief alongside a damaged orange.
Threading his way behind Issy, and between the thronged stalls and the miserable shops that lined the pavement, Hetherwick presently came to the piece of blank wall of which the Jew had told him. The houses and shops round about were old and dilapidated, but the wall was either modern or had been rebuilt and strengthened. It stretched between two low houses, one used as a grocer's, the other as a hardware shop. In length, it was some thirty feet; in height, quite ten; its coping, as Goldmark had said, was liberally embattled with broken glass. The door, set flush with the adjoining masonry, was a solid affair, faced with metal, newly painted, and the lock was evidently a patent one. A significant fact struck Hetherwick at once—there was no sign of a bell and none of a knocker.
"You say the woman let herself in here?" he asked, as he and Issy paused.
"That'th it, mithter Hetherwick—let herthelf in," replied Issy. "I thee her take the key from her pocket."
Hetherwick glanced at the top of the wall.
"I wonder what's behind?" he muttered. "Building of some sort, of course." He turned to a man whose stall stood just in front of the mysterious door, and who at that moment had no trade. "Do you know anything about this place?" he asked. "Do you know what's behind this wall? What building it is?"
The stall-keeper eyed Hetherwick over, silently and carefully. Deciding that he was an innocent person and not a policeman in plain clothes, he found his tongue.