“Why yes, sir, they ’ave been and took down the board from No. 13,” said the caretaker, “took it down beginning of the week, they did. But the ’ouse’s let, I think; it won’t be no good your going after it. If it’s a furnished ’ouse you’re looking for, I see a board hup in the next street t’other day. Little Cumberland Street.”
“Thank you very much,” said Gimblet. “I’ll take a look at it if I find No. 13 is let. Good morning, and I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
They left the woman to lock up the house and return to her caretaking, and started off up the street.
Sir Gregory went reluctantly, visibly hanging back.
“Look here,” he said to Gimblet, “why don’t you go over that house? It wouldn’t take a minute. Supposing they’ve got her shut up in an empty room at the top somewhere. Much better make sure.”
“My dear Sir Gregory, no one has been in that house for months; the dust was deep on the floor and there were no signs of its having been disturbed recently. Do you think two women in long evening dresses could go in without leaving some mark of their passage so short a time ago. Their dresses would either have swept away some of the dust or, if they held them high, their footmarks would have remained. It is impossible that No. 6 is the house, unless some one has spread fresh dust in the hall since Monday. Besides, it is very improbable that they should have gone to such a deserted, filthy building, and, on the contrary, more than likely that they should go to a house that had just been let. I felt sure there must have been a board up at another house in this street when Miss Finner passed, as soon as I looked at the floor. Come, here is No. 13, and I have a feeling that we shall find it a more profitable hunting ground.”
Gimblet opened, as he spoke, the gate of No. 13, and took a rapid scrutiny of its exterior as he walked quickly up the short distance that separated it from the road.
It showed a striking contrast to the forlorn and gloomy front offered to the world by the house they had just visited. No. 13 was spick and span; its white walls and shutters shone with the brightness of new paint; a neat grass plot, with a diminutive carriage drive winding in a half-circle round it, divided it from the railings of the street, the whole occupying no more than a few square yards of space. On each side of the flight of steps that led up to the front door there was a little triangular flower bed, gay with pansies, and, as the three men approached, the sun, breaking for the first time that day through the dilatory dispersal of the clouds, cast a shining beam about the place and was caught and reflected from the surface of the windows.
The change in the day was not without its effect even on Sir Gregory, and as he watched Higgs spring forward to ring the bell a new and sudden inrush of hope mounted to his heart.
“I have an excuse by which we may get into the house if they seem disinclined to admit us,” Gimblet was murmuring in his ear. “Back me up in all I say, but leave the chief part of the talking to me.”