The Herapath Property

by J. S. Fletcher

Triffitt bent over the plan. But he was not looking at the shaded portion over which the clerk’s pencil was straying; instead he was regarding the fact that across the corresponding portion of the plan was written in red ink the words, “Mr. Frank Burchill.” The third portion was blank; it, apparently, was unlet.

“That is really about the size of flat I want,” said Triffitt, musingly. “What’s the rent of that, now?”

“I can let that to you for fifty shillings a week,” answered the clerk. “That includes everything—there’s plate, linen, glass, china, anything you want. Slight attendance can be arranged for with our caretaker’s wife—that is, she can cook breakfast, and make beds, and do more, if necessary. Perhaps you would like to see this flat?”

Triffitt followed the clerk to the top of the house. The absent Mr. Stillwater’s rooms were comfortable and pleasant; one glance around them decided Triffitt.

“This place will suit me very well,” he said. “Now I’ll give you satisfactory references about myself, and pay you a month’s rent in advance, and if that’s all right to you, I’ll come in today. You can ring up my references on your ’phone, and then, if you’re satisfied, we’ll settle the rent, and I’ll see the caretaker’s wife about airing that bed.”

Within half an hour Triffitt was occupant of the flat, the cashier of the Argus having duly telephoned that he was a thoroughly dependable and much-respected member of its staff, and Triffitt himself having handed over ten pounds as rent for the coming month, he interviewed the caretaker’s wife, went to a neighbouring grocer’s shop and ordered a stock of necessaries wherewith to fill his larder, repaired to his own lodgings and brought away all that he wanted in the way of luggage, books, and papers, and by the middle of the afternoon was fairly settled in his new quarters. He spent an hour in putting himself and his belongings straight—and then came the question what next?

He was there for a special purpose—that special purpose was to acquaint himself as thoroughly as possible with the doings of Frank Burchill. Burchill was there—he was almost on the point of saying, in the next cell!—there, in the flat across the corridor; figuratively, within touch, if it were not for sundry divisions of brick, mortar, and the like. Burchill’s door was precisely opposite his own; there was an advantage in that fact. And in Triffitt’s outer door (all these flats, he discovered—that is, if they were all like his own, possessed double doors) there was a convenient letter slit, by manipulating which he could, if he chose, keep a perpetual observation on the other opposite. But Triffitt did not propose to sit with his eye glued to that letter slit all day—it might be useful at times, and for some special purpose, but he had wider views. And the first thing to do was to make an examination, geographical and exhaustive, of his own surroundings: Triffitt had learnt, during his journalistic training, that attention to details is one of the most important things in life.

The first thing that had struck Triffitt in this respect was that there was no lift in this building. He had remarked on that to the clerk, and the clerk had answered with a shrug of the shoulders that it was a mistake and one for which the proprietor was already having to pay. However, Triffitt, bearing in mind what job he was on, was not displeased that the lift had been omitted—it is sometimes an advantage to be able to hang over the top rail of a staircase and watch people coming up from below. He stored that fact in his mental reservoirs. And now that he had got into his rooms, he proceeded to seek for more facts. First, as to the rooms themselves—he wanted to know all about them, because he had carefully noticed, while looking at the plan of that floor in the office downstairs, that Burchill’s flat was arranged exactly like his own. And Triffitt’s flat was like this—you entered through a double door into a good-sized sitting-room, out of which two other rooms led—one went into a small kitchen and pantry; the other into the bedroom, at the side of which was a little bathroom. The windows of the bedroom opened on to a view of the street below; those of the sitting-room on to a square of garden, on the lawn of which tenants might disport themselves, more or less sadly, with tennis or croquet in summer.

Triffitt looked out of his sitting-room windows last of all. He then perceived with great joy that in front of them was a balcony, and that this balcony stretched across the entire front of the house. There were, in fact, balconies to all five floors—the notion being, of course, that occupants could whenever they pleased sit out there in such sunlight as struggled between their own roof and the tall buildings opposite. It immediately occurred to Triffitt that here was an easy way of making a call upon your next door neighbour; instead of crossing the corridor and knocking at his door, you had nothing to do but walk along the balcony and tap at his window. Filled with this thought Triffitt immediately stepped out on his balcony and inspected the windows of his own and the next flat. He immediately saw something which filled him with a great idea. Both windows were fitted with patent ventilators, let into the top panes. Now, supposing one of these ventilators was fully open, and two people were talking within the room in even the ordinary tones of conversation—would it not be possible for an eavesdropper outside to hear a good deal, if not everything, of what was said? The idea was worth thinking over, anyway, and Triffitt retired indoors to ruminate over it and over much else.

For two or three days nothing happened. Twice Triffitt met Burchill on the stairs—Burchill, of course, did not know him from Adam, and gave him no more than the mere glance he would have thrown at any other ordinary young man. Triffitt, however, gave Burchill more than a passing look—unobtrusively. Certainly he was the man whom he had seen in the dock nine years before in that far-off Scottish town—there was little appreciable alteration in his appearance, except that he was now very smartly dressed. There were peculiarities about the fellow, said Triffitt, which you couldn’t forget—certainly, Frank Burchill was Francis Bentham.