little later, having left the car at the beginning of the straggling High Street, the two men called at the village post office. They had already visited the house agent and obtained an order to view Brookbend Cottage, declining, with some difficulty, the clerk’s persistent offer to accompany them. The reason was soon forthcoming. “As a matter of fact,” explained the young man, “the present tenant is under ournotice to leave.”
“Unsatisfactory, eh?” said Carrados encouragingly.
“He’s a corker,” admitted the clerk, responding to the friendly tone. “Fifteen months and not a doit of rent have we had. That’s why I should have liked——”
“We will make every allowance,” replied Carrados.
The post office occupied one side of a stationer’s shop. It was not without some inward trepidation that Mr Carlyle found himself committed to the adventure. Carrados, on the other hand, was the personification of bland unconcern.
“You have just sent a telegram to Brookbend Cottage,” he said to the young lady behind the brasswork lattice. “We think it may have come inaccurately and should like a repeat.” He took out his purse. “What is the fee?”
The request was evidently not a common one. “Oh,” said the girl uncertainly, “wait a minute, please.” She turned to a pile of telegram duplicates behind the desk and ran a doubtful finger along the upper sheets. “I think this is all right. You want it repeated?”
“Please.” Just a tinge of questioning surprise gave point to the courteous tone.
“It will be fourpence. If there is an error the amount will be refunded.”
Carrados put down a coin and received his change.
“Will it take long?” he inquired carelessly, as he pulled on his glove.
“You will most likely get it within a quarter of an hour,” she replied.
“Now you’ve done it,” commented Mr Carlyle, as they walked back to their car. “How do you propose to get that telegram, Max?”
“Ask for it,” was the laconic explanation.
And, stripping the artifice of any elaboration, he simply asked for it and got it. The car, posted at a convenient bend in the road, gave him a warning note as the telegraph-boy approached. Then Carrados took up a convincing attitude with his hand on the gate while Mr Carlyle lent himself to the semblance of a departing friend. That was the inevitable impression when the boy rode up.
“Creake, Brookbend Cottage?” inquired Carrados, holding out his hand, and without a second thought the boy gave him the envelope and rode away on the assurance that there would be no reply.
“Some day, my friend,” remarked Mr Carlyle, looking nervously towards the unseen house, “your ingenuity will get you into a tight corner.”
“Then my ingenuity must get me out again,” was the retort. “Let us have our ‘view’ now. The telegram can wait.”
An untidy workwoman took their order and left them standing at the door. Presently a lady whom they both knew to be Mrs Creake appeared.
“You wish to see over the house?” she said, in a voice that was utterly devoid of any interest. Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned to the nearest door and threw it open.
“This is the drawing-room,” she said, standing aside.
They walked into a sparsely furnished, damp-smelling room and made a pretence of looking round, while Mrs Creake remained silent and aloof.
“The dining-room,” she continued, crossing the narrow hall and opening another door.
Mr Carlyle ventured a genial commonplace in the hope of inducing conversation. The result was not encouraging. Doubtless they would have gone through the house under the same frigid guidance had not Carrados been at fault in a way that Mr Carlyle had never known him fail before. In crossing the hall he stumbled over a mat and almost fell.
“Pardon my clumsiness,” he said to the lady. “I am, unfortunately, quite blind. But,” he added, with a smile, to turn off the mishap, “even a blind man must have a house.”
The man who had eyes was surprised to see a flood of colour rush into Mrs Creake’s face.
“Blind!” she exclaimed, “oh, I beg your pardon. Why did you not tell me? You might have fallen.”
“I generally manage fairly well,” he replied. “But, of course, in a strange house——”
She put her hand on his arm very lightly.
“You must let me guide you, just a little,” she said.
The house, without being large, was full of passages and inconvenient turnings. Carrados asked an occasional question and found Mrs Creake quite amiable without effusion. Mr Carlyle followed them from room to room in the hope, though scarcely the expectation, of learning something that might be useful.
“This is the last one. It is the largest bedroom,” said their guide. Only two of the upper rooms were fully furnished and Mr Carlyle at once saw, as Carrados knew without seeing, that this was the one which the Creakes occupied.
“A very pleasant outlook,” declared Mr Carlyle.
“Oh, I suppose so,” admitted the lady vaguely. The room, in fact, looked over the leafy garden and the road beyond. It had a French window opening on to a small balcony, and to this, under the strange influence that always attracted him to light, Carrados walked.
“I expect that there is a certain amount of repair needed?” he said, after standing there a moment.
“I am afraid there would be,” she confessed.
“I ask because there is a sheet of metal on the floor here,” he continued. “Now that, in an old house, spells dry rot to the wary observer.”
“My husband said that the rain, which comes in a little under the window, was rotting the boards there,” she replied. “He put that down recently. I had not noticed anything myself.”
It was the first time she had mentioned her husband; Mr Carlyle pricked up his ears.
“Ah, that is a less serious matter,” said Carrados. “May I step out on to the balcony?”
“Oh yes, if you like to.” Then, as he appeared to be fumbling at the catch, “Let me open it for you.”
But the window was already open, and Carrados, facing the various points of the compass, took in the bearings.
“A sunny, sheltered corner,” he remarked. “An ideal spot for a deck-chair and a book.”
She shrugged her shoulders half contemptuously.
“I dare say,” she replied, “but I never use it.”
“Sometimes, surely,” he persisted mildly. “It would be my favourite retreat. But then——”
