That afternoon I drove past the house in a cab, and taking notice of the address of the firm of estate agents who, according to the notice-board, had the letting of it, went on to their office in Sloane Street, arriving there just as they were closing. I ascertained that the house had been let six months before to an Indian merchant, named Fryer, who had signed an agreement for five years. I observed that the house was still empty and the board had not been removed, whereupon the clerk told me that the new tenant had, before returning to India, said it was probable that he would not return to take possession for perhaps another year.
“I have a very keen desire to go over the place,” I said disappointedly, after he had told me that they had given up the key. “Some relatives of mine once lived there, and the house has so many pleasant memories for me. Is it absolutely impossible to obtain entrance to it?”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” the man answered. “The tenant has possession. It is his own fault that the board has not been removed.”
“Come,” I said, bending over the counter towards him, “I feel sure the tenant would not object to me going over the place. Here is my card, and if there are any little out-of-pocket expenses I’m prepared to pay them, you know.”
He smiled and glanced at me with a knowing air, as if calculating the amount of the “tip” that I might be expected to disburse, and then exclaimed in a low tone so that his fellow-clerks should not overhear:
“The case is rather peculiar. Although this Mr Fryer has taken the house and we have given up the key, yet to effect an entrance would really be easy enough. You must keep secret from the firm what I tell you, but the fact is when the house was first put into our hands, some years ago, we had a caretaker who did not live on the premises, and as we required to keep a key here in case anyone called to go over the house, we had to have a duplicate key made for him. We have that key still in our possession.”
Slowly I drew from my waistcoat-pocket a sovereign and slipped it unobserved into his palm, saying: “Lend me that key until to-morrow.”
He walked away with a businesslike air in order to disarm any suspicion that he had been bribed, returned with a ledger, commenced to recommend other houses, and subsequently gave me a latch-key, with one stipulation, that it must be returned to him at 9:30 next morning.
While hurrying along Knightsbridge I met Fyneshade unexpectedly, and wishing to hear about Mabel and Markwick, accepted his invitation to dine at the St. Stephen’s Club, instead of going on direct to Gloucester Square. During the meal I learnt that since the evening I had left him stealing from his house like a thief, he had not returned there. Only that morning he had arrived back from Rome, and knew nothing of Mabel or of the man who, according to her statement, had been the cause of their estrangement. Finding that he could give me no information, I excused myself soon after dinner, and purchasing a cheap bull’s-eye lantern and a box of matches in a back street in Westminster, entered a hansom.
Had it not been for the fact that I had promised to return the key to the house-agent’s clerk at that early hour in the morning, I would have gladly postponed my investigations until daylight, but hindered as I had been by Fyneshade, it was nearly half-past nine when I alighted from the cab at the corner of Hyde Park and walked to Radnor Place, where the front entrance of the houses forming one side of Gloucester Square are situated. Halting under the great dark portico of number seventy-nine, I glanced up and down the street. The lamps shed only a dim sickly light, the street was deserted, and the quiet only broken by the monotonous tinkling of a cab-bell somewhere in Southwick Crescent, and the howling of a distant dog.