And twenty minutes later, the patience of the idle folk who hung about the High Street in the hope of catching a glimpse of some actor in what was already beginning to be called the Terriford Mystery, was rewarded.
Dr. Maclean’s familiar covered-in two-seater dashed up to the fine old red brick house on the door of which was a big brass plate bearing the words, “Toogood, Lane & Co., Solicitors,” and the group of idlers pressed forward to see the girl who was the heroine of the case alight from the car.
“She looks a deep one,” ventured a voice; and then there came the answer from more than one pair of lips, “Ay, ay, so she do!”
Her ordeal, or rather Dr. Maclean’s ordeal, for she was unaware of the glances levelled at her, did not last long, for the doctor and his niece were kept only a moment standing outside the mahogany door.
Mr. Toogood had hurried downstairs as soon as he had heard the two-seater drawing up in the street, and this alone would have marked the great importance he attached to the visit, for he was not the man to put himself out unnecessarily.
He shook hands with them both in a perfunctory, hurried way, and then led the way up to the spacious first floor. Once there, he opened the door of a back room:
“Now then, my dear young lady, you go in here! I’m afraid it will be some time before I shall ask you to join us.”
He shut the door on her, and preceded Dr. Maclean into the large front room which, though lined with tin boxes, each of which was inscribed in white letters with the name of some local worthy, might have been the comfortable study of a man of leisure.
On the flat writing table stood a bunch of sweet-smelling hot-house flowers, for Mr. Toogood was a keen gardener.
“Well, Maclean? Sit ye down! This is a grim business, eh?”