“Thank you,” said Pym.
The right house sighted at last, Mr. Pym took his standing in a friendly door-way on the other side of the road, and put himself on the watch. Very much after the fashion of a bailiff’s man, who wants to serve a writ.
He glanced up at the windows; he looked down at the doors; he listened to the sound of a church clock striking; he scraped his feet in impatience, now one foot, now the other. Nothing came of it. The rooms behind the curtained windows might be untenanted for all the sign given out to the eager eyes of Mr. Pym.
“Hang it all!” he cried, in an explosion of impatience: and he could have sent the silent dwelling to Jericho.
No man of business likes his time to be wasted: and Mr. Pym could very especially not afford to waste his to-day. For he was supposed to be at St. Katherine’s Docks, checking cargo on board the Rose of Delhi. When twelve o’clock struck, the dinner hour, he had made a rush from the ship, telling the foreman of the shed not to ship any more cargo till he came back in half-an-hour, and had come dashing up here in a fleet cab. The half-hour had expired, and another half-hour to it, and it was a great deal more than time to dash back again. If anybody from the office chanced to go down to the ship, what a row there’d be!—and he would probably get his discharge.
He had not been lucky in his journey from Worcestershire the previous day. The train was detained so on the line, through some heavy waggons having come to grief, that he did not reach London till late at night; too late to go down to his lodgings near the docks; so he slept at an hotel. This morning he had reported himself at the broker’s office; and Mr. Freeman, after blowing him up for his delay, ordered him on board at once: since they began to load, two days ago now, a clerk from the office had been down on the ship, making up the cargo-books in Pym’s place.
“I’ll be hanged if I don’t believe they must all be dead!” cried Pym, gazing at the house. “Why does not somebody show himself? I can’t post the letter—for I know my letters to her are being suppressed. And I dare not leave it at the door myself, lest that cantankerous Ozias should answer me, and hand it to old Dace, instead of to Vera.”
Luck at last! The door opened, and a maid-servant came out with a jug, her bonnet thrown on perpendicularly. Mr. Pym kept her in view, and caught her up as she was nearing a public-house.
“You come from Mrs. Ball’s, Woburn Place?” said he.
“Yes, sir,” answered the girl, doubtfully, rather taken aback at the summary address, but capitulating to the gold-lace band.