"You'll have enough money given you to take you down there; you will remember that you are Tinman, my personal servant. You'll have no difficulty about it; they'll put you up at the house. Fanshawe will take you out now, and rig you up properly; you'll be back here by six o'clock. Your train leaves at a few minutes to seven." He turned to Jervis Fanshawe, and spoke impatiently. "Do you think the idiot understands?"
"Perfectly," was the reply. "You don't want him too sharp, you know."
"You're doing splendidly," said Fanshawe, when we were outside the place again. "I can see that you'll be just the very man to do the work he wants; you'll play the dumb dog, and do what you're told, and ask no questions, won't you?"
"Of course," I replied; but I think he was a little disappointed that I should appear to take so little interest in this new life that was being mapped out for me.
Some clothing was bought for me at a second-hand dealer's, and I was rigged out cheaply to fit my new position. I did not see Murray Olivant when I went back to his rooms; his manservant pointed to the luggage that had been packed, and gave me a letter addressed to Lucas Savell, and some money. At the last moment before opening the door the man plucked me by the sleeve, and drew me back, and whispered—
"I say, who are you? and what are you supposed to be? Hang me if I can make you out."
"It isn't necessary," I replied; "I don't know myself." I went out of the place, carrying some of the luggage, and leaving him to follow with the rest.
A cab was called, and I started; my last vision of the servant was seeing him standing on the pavement outside the house, scratching his chin and staring perplexedly after me. But, in my deeper anxiety as to what was going to happen to me in that strange house at Hammerstone Market, I forgot his very existence by the time the cab had turned the corner.
I reached Hammerstone Market without adventure, took a fly from the station, and drove to the house. Darkness had long since set in, and I could see nothing of the grounds when presently the vehicle turned in at the gates; I could only judge, by the sound of the churning wheels, that we were driving through masses of dead leaves that must have lain there for many past years. Coming to the house at last, I was deposited with the luggage outside the door, and the fly drove away. I stood there in the darkness, hearing a great bell clang somewhere in the distance, and wondering what would be said to me when the door should presently open.