The gig bowled onwards. Mr. Strange stood still as he looked after it: and had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Philip Smith smoking his long pipe at his own window, and regarding the landscape with equanimity. He went on the other way.
"Good morning, Mr. Tatton."
Mr. Tatton turned on his heel and saluted Sir Karl Andinnian, who had followed him up. There was a degree of suppressed indignation in Karl's face rarely seen.
"Is this true that I have just heard, Mr. Tatton," he began, calling the man by his true name--"that you have been again searching the Maze? My butler informs me that he saw you and two policemen quit it but now."
"It is true enough, Sir Karl. Salter is there. At least, he was there yesterday. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the sick man to whom Dr. Cavendish was called was Salter. I obtained a description of him from the doctor, and should have recognized it anywhere."
What was Karl to say? He could not attempt to deny that a sick man had been there. It was an unfortunate circumstance that Sir Adam, in regard to height and colour of hair, somewhat answered to the description of Philip Salter.
"Sir Karl, you must yourself see that there's a mystery somewhere," resumed the detective, who (having taken his clue from Superintendent Game) honestly believed that the baronet of Foxwood Court cared not a rap for Salter, and had no covert interest in the matter, beyond that of protecting his tenant at the Maze. "Some one, who is never seen by the public, is living at the Maze, that's certain; or, at any rate, dodging us there. Remember the gentleman in evening attire seen by the surgeon and nurse; and now there's this gentleman sick abed yesterday. These men could not be myths, Sir Karl. Who, then, are they?"
From sheer inability to advance any theory upon the point, lest he should do mischief, Karl was silent. These repeated trials, these shocks of renewed dread, were getting more than he knew how to bear. Had they come upon Adam this morning? He did not dare to ask.
"As to the tale told me by the woman servant and Mrs. Grey--that the sick gentleman was a relative who had come down by train and left again, it will not hold water," contemptuously resumed the detective. "Men don't go out for a day's journey when they are as ill as he is--no, nor take long sea voyages. Why, if what Dr. Cavendish fears is correct, there cannot be many weeks of life left in the man he saw yesterday; neither, if it be so, can the man himself be unconscious of it."
Karl's heart stood still with its shock of pain.