“No, I don’t think they are, because my maid heard at Boucher’s—the grocer’s across the way—that they owed a large bill which they couldn’t settle. Again, people who have a house of that sort do not have coal by the hundredweight taken down into the kitchen as they do.”
Patterson nodded. No more sure sign of a light purse is there than the purchase of coal by the half-sack. Yet the interior of that house, with its well-laid dinner-table, certainly did not betray any sign of poverty. Indeed, I had noticed in the cellar a dusty stock of choice wines, hocks, ports, and champagnes of expensive brands.
“You don’t know the young lady’s name, then?” asked my friend, after a slight pause.
“If she’s really his daughter it would, I suppose, be Dawson,” she replied with a smile. “But I’m not certain, remember, as to either of their names.”
“Perhaps your servants may know something about them. Servants generally gossip and pick up information about one’s neighbours, you know.”
“You are right,” answered the affable old lady, “they gossip far too much. Unfortunately, however, both my servants are out at this moment.”
We chatted on, but it was evident from her conversation that her servants knew little beyond what she did. One statement she made was somewhat curious. She alleged that a few nights before she was awakened about two o’clock in the morning by hearing the loud shrill screams of a woman who seemed to be in the room next hers in the adjoining house. She could hear a man’s voice talking low and gruffly, and three or four times were the screams repeated, as if the woman were in excruciating pain.
“What visitors came to the house?” Patterson asked at length.
“Very few. A youngish gentleman came sometimes. He called the other morning just as I was going out.”
“Who admitted him?”