"Barker was married," he said. "He married a Mary Doherty up in Claremont four years ago, when he was forty. She was twenty."
"Is that all you have found out?"
"All so far."
"That's good, so far as it goes, but I can add to it. She ran away from him, is probably now in Saintsbury, and the chances are that it was she who empowered Collier the undertaker to arrange for his burial. Advertise in the papers for Mary Doherty, and say that she will learn of something to her advantage by communicating with me. I'll make it to her advantage! Keep the advertisement going until I tell you to stop. That's all."
Fellows went off and I knew the matter would be attended to faithfully and with intelligence. But several times during the day I noticed that he was unlike himself. He was absent-minded and he looked unmistakably worried. It frets me to have people about me who are obviously burdened with secret sorrows they will ne'er impart, and I finally spoke.
"What in thunder is the matter with you today, Fellows? What's on your mind?"
"Nothing," he said quickly. But after a minute or so he looked up with that same disturbed air. "Who would have thought that he had a wife?"
"That's not especially astonishing."
"I never thought that there could be a woman--a woman who could care for him, I mean."
"She probably didn't. She ran away."