CHAPTER VIII
AT DEAD OF NIGHT
David Harcourt, meantime, had long since reached home after his interview with Miss L’Estrange, whereupon Mrs. Grover had presented him with her first specimen of housewifery in the shape of a lunch. But, as if to prove that the fates were against literature that day, she also presented him with a letter from the agent Dibbin, saying: “Herein please find address of Sarah Gissing, servant of the late Miss Gwendoline Barnes, as promised.”
David’s first impulse was to go straightway after the meal to interview this Sarah Gissing. Then he set his lips, saying to himself: “The day’s work,” and, after lighting his pipe, he walked up to his literary tools with the grimness of a man about to throttle an enemy. Whereupon he sat down and wrote something. When he came back to earth with a weary but taut brain, Mrs. Grover was gone for the day. It was near seven in the evening, and the prairie-wolf within was growling “Dinner-time.”
His mental faculties being now on a tension, he thought to himself that there was no reason why he should not be prompt, and call upon Miss Gissing that evening. Though, after dinner, a mortal lethargy and reaction seized upon him with the whisper, “To-morrow is better than to-day,” he proved true to his high-strung self, and went by bus to Baker-St., where he took train for the station nearest the village of Chalfont.
It was a sharp walk from station to village. There was no cab; and when he arrived at the Peacock Inn, where Sarah Gissing was now a barmaid, he learned that she was away on leave at a neighboring village. He strolled about the silent street until Sarah came home at ten o’clock, a thin girl, with projecting top teeth, and a chronic stare of wonderment in her eyes.
“You are not to be alarmed,” David said to her. “I only came to ask you a few questions about your late mistress, Miss Gwendoline Barnes, in whom I have an interest. No one will be harmed, as far as I am aware, by your telling me all that you know, while you and I may profit by it.”
They spoke in the tiny inn drawing-room, and Sarah in her coat, with her hat on, sitting on the piano-stool, stared and answered shortly at first. Little by little she was induced to utter herself.
“He was a tall man,” she said, “rather thin, dark and pale—”
“Straight nose?” asked David.