CHAPTER IV.
Mr. Bendelow
There are certain districts in London the appearance of which conveys to the observer the impression that the houses, and indeed, the entire streets, have been picked up second-hand. There is in this aspect a grey, colourless, mouldy quality, reminiscent, not of the antique shop, but rather of the marine store dealers; a quality which even communicates itself to the inhabitants, so that one gathers the impression that the whole neighbourhood was taken as a going concern.
It was on such a district that I found myself looking down from the top of an omnibus a few days after the inquest (Dr. Cornish’s brougham being at the moment under repairs and his horse “out to grass” during the slack season), being bound for a street in the neighbourhood of Hoxton—Market-street by name—which abutted, as I had noticed when making out my route, on the Regent’s Canal. The said route I had written out, and now, in the intervals of my surveys of the unlovely prospect, I divided my attention between it and the note which had summoned me to these remote regions.
Concerning the latter I was somewhat curious, for the envelope was addressed, not to Dr. Cornish, but to “Dr. Stephen Gray.” This was really quite an odd circumstance. Either the writer knew me personally or was aware that I was acting as locum tenens for Cornish. But the name—James Morris—was unknown to me, and a careful inspection of the index of the ledger had failed to bring to light any one answering to the description. So Mr. Morris was presumably a stranger to my principal also. The note, which had been left by hand in the morning, requested me to call “as early in the forenoon as possible,” which seemed to hint at some degree of urgency. Naturally, as a young practitioner, I speculated with interest, not entirely unmingled with anxiety, on the possible nature of the case, and also on the patient’s reasons for selecting a medical attendant whose residence was so inconveniently far away.
In accordance with my written route, I got off the omnibus at the corner of Shepherdess-walk, and pursuing that pastoral thoroughfare for some distance, presently plunged into a labyrinth of streets adjoining it and succeeded most effectually in losing myself. However, inquiries addressed to an intelligent fish-vendor elicited a most lucid direction and I soon found myself in a little, drab street which justified its name by giving accommodation to a row of stationary barrows loaded with what looked like the “throw-outs” from a colossal spring clean. Passing along this kerb-side market and reflecting (like Diogenes, in similar circumstances) how many things there were in the world that I did not want, I walked slowly up the street looking for Number 23—my patient’s number—and the canal which I had seen on the map. I located them both at the same instant, for Number 23 turned out to be the last house on the opposite side, and a few yards beyond it the street was barred by a low wall, over which, as I looked, the mast of a sailing-barge came into view and slowly crept past. I stepped up to the wall and looked over. Immediately beneath me was the towing-path, alongside which the barge was now bringing up and beginning to lower her mast, apparently in order to pass under a bridge that spanned the canal some two hundred yards farther along.
From these nautical manœuvres I transferred my attention to my patient’s house—or, at least, so much of it as I could see; for Number 23 appeared to consist of a shop with nothing over it. There was, however, in a wall which extended to the canal wall a side door with a bell and knocker, so I inferred that the house was behind the shop, and that the latter had been built on a formerly existing front garden. The shop itself was somewhat reminiscent of the stalls down the street, for though the fascia was newly painted (with the inscription “J. Morris, General Dealer”) the stock-in-trade exhibited in the window was in the last stage of senile decay. It included, I remember, a cracked Toby jug, a mariner’s sextant of an obsolete type, a Dutch clock without hands, a snuff-box, one or two plaster statuettes, an invalid punch-bowl, a shiny, dark, and inscrutable oil painting and a plaster mask, presumably the death mask of some celebrity whose face was unknown to me.
My examination of this collection was brought to a sudden end by the apparition of a face above the half-blind of glazed shop-door; the face of a middle-aged woman who seemed to be inspecting me with malevolent interest. Assuming—rather too late—a brisk, professional manner, I opened the shop door, thereby setting a bell jangling within, and confronted the owner of the face.
“I am Dr. Gray,” I began to explain.
“Side door,” she interrupted brusquely. “Ring the bell and knock.”
I backed out hastily and proceeded to follow the directions, giving a tug at the bell and delivering a flourish on the knocker. The hollow reverberations of the latter almost suggested an empty house, but my vigorous pull at the bell-handle produced no audible result, from which I inferred—wrongly, as afterwards appeared—that it was out of repair. After waiting quite a considerable time, I was about to repeat the performance when I heard sounds within; and then the door was opened, to my surprise, by the identical sour-faced woman whom I had seen in the shop. As her appearance and manner did not invite conversation, and she uttered no word, I followed her in silence through a long passage, or covered way, which ran parallel to the side of the shop and presumably crossed the site of the garden. It ended at a door which opened into the hall proper; a largish square space into which the doors of the ground-floor rooms opened. It contained the main staircase and was closed in at the farther end by a heavy curtain which extended from wall to wall.