"Thank you," Coke said.
"Grocott's," she repeated in a whisper. Then in a louder tone, "No, sir, I can't say when he will be at home."
"Thank you," Sir Hervey said; and having got what he wanted he did not stay to waste time with the man, but made the best of his way to Charles Street, into which the north end of Clarges Row, now Clarges Street, opened at that date. Deeply engaged with the paramount question in his mind, the identity of the young man in whose company Sophia had left Hawkesworth's lodgings, he forgot the bailiffs; and it was with some annoyance that, on reaching the Row, he espied one of them lurking in a doorway in Charles Street. It was so plain that they were watching him that Sir Hervey lost patience, turned, and made towards the man to question him. But the fellow also turned on his heel, and retreating with an eye over his shoulder, disappeared in the square. To follow was to be led from the scent; Coke wheeled again, therefore, and meeting a potboy who knew the street, he was directed to Grocott's. The house the lad pointed out was one of the oldest in the Row; a small house of brick, the last on the east side going north. Sir Hervey scanned the five windows that faced the street, but they told him nothing. He knocked--and waited. And presently, getting no answer, he knocked again. And again--the pot-boy looking on from a little distance.
After that Coke stood back, saw that the windows were still without sign of life, and would have gone away--thinking to return in an hour or two--but a woman came to the door of the next house, and told him, "the old man is at home, your honour; it is not ten minutes since he was at the door." On which he knocked again more loudly and insistently. Suspicions were taking shape in his mind. The house seemed too quiet to be innocent.
He had his hand raised to repeat the summons once more, when he heard a dragging, pottering step moving along the passage towards him. A chain was put up, a key turned, the door was opened a little, a very little way. A pale, fat face, with small, cunning eyes, peered out at him. Unless he was mistaken, it was the face of a frightened man.
"I want to see Miss Maitland," Sir Hervey said.
"To be sure, sir," the man answered, while his small eyes scanned the visitor sharply. "Is it about a clock?"
"No," Coke answered. "Are you deaf, man? I wish to see the young lady who is here; who came last night."
"You're very welcome, I am sure, but there is no young lady here, your honour."
Sir Hervey did not believe it. The man's sly face, masking fear under a smirk, inspired no confidence; this talking over a chain, at that hour, in the daylight, of itself imported something strange. Apparently Grocott--for he it was--read the last thought in his visitor's eyes, for he dropped the chain and opened the door. "Was it about a clock," he asked, the hand that held the door trembling visibly, "that the lady came?"