‘I’ll not forget.—Good-night!’
It was just sufficiently light in the passage for Walter to find his way about the old house. Having promised Silas Monk to make sure that every one had left the premises, he ran up the dark oaken staircase to ascertain whether the partners, who occupied the floor above the office, had gone. He found the doors to their rooms locked. The young man threw a glance around him, and then descended the way he had come, walking out into the court, behind the clerks’ offices, where the scaffolding was erected. It was not a large court, and on every side were high brick walls. The scaffolding reached from the ground almost to the eaves.
‘Any one there?’ Walter shouted.
Not a sound came back except a muttering echo of his own voice.
Walter Tiltcroft then turned to leave the house. But at this moment his conversation with Rachel occurred to him, and he thought that he might do something to clear up the mystery of her grandfather’s frequent absence from home at all hours of the night. ‘Why not,’ thought Walter, ‘watch the old man’s movements? Some clue might be found to the strange affair.’ He formed his plan of action without further delay. No moment could have been more opportune. He closed the front-door with a slam which shook the old house; then he crept back along the passage softly, and, seating himself in a dark corner on the staircase, watched for the figure of Silas Monk.
The first thing he heard, very shortly after he had taken up his position, was a step in the passage leading from the courtyard. He sprang up with a quick beating heart, and reached the foot of the stairs just in time to confront a tall, powerful man dressed like a mason, and carrying in his hand a large basket of tools.
‘Why, Joe Grimrood,’ said Walter, ‘is that you?’
The man, who had a hangdog, defiant air, answered gruffly, as he scratched a mangy-looking skin-cap, pulled down to his eyebrows: ‘That’s me, sir; asking your pardon.’
‘Are you the last, Joe?’
‘There ain’t no more men on the scaffold, if that’s what you mean.’