“Really, doctor,” he said, “the matter increases in interest daily.”
“When I take possession of the Manor, I think we ought to make a search,” I replied. “We must not allow burglars to enter there, or they may forestall us after all.”
“Of course, of course. The treasure may be hidden in the house for aught we know. It is important that we should be the first to make a thorough examination of the place.”
“But what is most important of all is that we’ve gained the address of this man Purvis.”
“Calthorpe Street is not the most respectable neighbourhood in London,” he observed. “Do you know it?”
I confessed to ignorance, but next morning went to Gray’s Inn Road and found the dingy street running off to the right, opposite the end of Guilford Street. No. 7 was, I discovered, a grimy, smoke-blackened private house, like most of the others, set back behind iron railings, with a deep basement. The windows sadly required cleaning, and at them hung limp and sooty lace curtains which had once been white.
Walking on the opposite side of the pavement I passed and repassed it several times, noting its exterior well. The windows of the first floor were better kept than those of the dining-room, and on a small round table I noticed a doll. From those facts I gathered that the place was let out in apartments, and that the occupants of the first floor were a man with his wife and little daughter. It was not yet eight o’clock, and the newspaper man passing left a paper beneath the knocker—a Sporting Life, which further showed the racing proclivities of at least one of the inmates. Presently, as I watched, the postman came along, and, slipping several letters into the slit in the front door, passed on without knocking.
I hurried along the street into the King’s Cross Road, and, when he turned the corner, accosted him.
At first he was inclined to be uncommunicative, as a good servant of the Post Office should be, but by the application of a small refresher his tongue was unloosened, and he told me that the occupants of No. 7 were racing people.
“They’re bookmakers, I fancy,” he added. “They have lots of letters by every post, and post-cards about tips and things.”