a week’s rent to her to give vent to her feelings. The controversial couple had moved away from the window when Tom entered, and had not noticed the immediate advent of another visitor who had spent his time profitably in listening to Mrs. Crowl before asking to see the presumable object of his visit.
“Ask him up if it’s a friend of yours, Cantercot,” said Peter. It was Wimp. Denzil was rather dubious as to the friendship, but he preferred to take Wimp diluted. “Mortlake’s upstairs,” he said. “Will you come up and see him?”
Wimp had intended a duologue, but he made no objection, so he, too, stumbled through the nine brats to Mrs. Crowl’s bedroom. It was a queer quartette. Wimp had hardly expected to find anybody at the house on Boxing Day, but he did not care to waste a day. Was not Grodman, too, on the track? How lucky it was that Denzil had made the first overtures, so that he could approach him without exciting suspicion.
Mortlake scowled when he saw the detective. He objected to the police—on principle. But Crowl had no idea who the visitor was, even when told his name. He was rather pleased to meet one of Denzil’s high-class friends, and welcomed him warmly. Probably he was some famous editor, which would account for his name stirring vague recollections. He summoned the eldest brat and sent him for beer (people would have their Fads), and not without trepidation called down to “Mother” for glasses. “Mother” observed at night (in the same apartment) that the beer money might have paid the week’s school fees for half the family.
“We were just talking of poor Mr. Constant’s portrait, Mr. Wimp,” said the unconscious Crowl; “they’re going to unveil it, Mortlake tells me, on the twenty-first of next month at the Bow Break o’ Day Club.”
“Ah,” said Wimp, elated at being spared the trouble of maneuvering the conversation; “mysterious affair that, Mr. Crowl.”
“No; it’s the right thing,” said Peter. “There ought to be some memorial of the man in the district where he worked and where he died, poor chap.” The cobbler brushed away a tear.
“Yes, it’s only right,” echoed Mortlake a whit eagerly. “He was a noble fellow, a true philanthropist. The only thoroughly unselfish worker I’ve ever met.”
“He was that,” said Peter; “and it’s a rare pattern is unselfishness. Poor fellow, poor fellow. He preached the Useful, too. I’ve never met his like. Ah, I wish there was a Heaven for him to go to!” He blew his nose violently with a red pocket-handkerchief.
“Well, he’s there, if there is,” said Tom.
“I hope he is,” added Wimp fervently; “but I shouldn’t like to go there the way he did.”
“You were the last person to see him, Tom, weren’t you?” said Denzil.
“Oh, no,” answered Tom quickly. “You remember he went out after me; at least, so Mrs. Drabdump said at the inquest.”
“That last conversation he had with you, Tom,” said Denzil. “He didn’t say anything to you that would lead you to suppose—”
“No, of course not!” interrupted Mortlake impatiently.
“Do you really think he was murdered, Tom?” said Denzil.
“Mr. Wimp’s opinion on that point is more valuable than mine,” replied Tom, testily. “It may have been suicide. Men often get sick of life—especially if they are bored,” he added meaningly.
“Ah, but you were the last person known to be with him,” said Denzil.
Crowl laughed. “Had you there, Tom.”
But they did not have Tom there much longer, for he departed, looking even worse-tempered than when he came. Wimp went soon after, and Crowl and Denzil were left to their interminable argumentation concerning the Useful and the Beautiful.
Wimp went west. He had several strings (or cords) to his bow, and he ultimately found himself at Kensal Green Cemetery. Being there, he went down the avenues of the dead to a grave to note down the exact date of a death. It was a day on which the dead seemed enviable. The dull, sodden sky, the dripping, leafless trees, the wet spongy soil, the reeking grass—everything combined to make one long to be in a warm, comfortable grave, away from the leaden ennui of life. Suddenly the detective’s keen eye caught sight of a figure that made his heart throb with sudden excitement. It was that of a woman in a gray shawl and a brown bonnet standing before a railed-in grave. She had no umbrella. The rain plashed mournfully upon her, but left no trace on her soaking garments. Wimp crept up behind her, but she paid no heed to him. Her eyes were lowered to the grave, which seemed to be drawing them toward it by some strange morbid fascination. His eyes followed hers. The simple headstone bore the name: “Arthur Constant.”
Wimp tapped her suddenly on the shoulder.
Mrs. Drabdump went deadly white. She turned round, staring at Wimp without any recognition.
“You remember me, surely,” he said. “I’ve been down once or twice to your place about that poor gentleman’s papers.” His eye indicated the grave.
“Lor! I remember you now,” said Mrs. Drabdump.
“Won’t you come under my umbrella? You must be drenched to the skin.”
“It don’t matter, sir. I can’t take no hurt. I’ve had the rheumatics this twenty year.”
Mrs. Drabdump shrank from accepting Wimp’s attentions, not so much perhaps because he was a man as because he was a gentleman. Mrs. Drabdump liked to see the fine folks keep their place, and not contaminate their skirts by contact with the lower castes. “It’s set wet, it’ll rain right into the new year,” she announced. “And they say a bad beginnin’ makes a worse endin’.” Mrs. Drabdump was one of those persons who give you the idea that they just missed being born barometers.
“But what are you doing in this miserable spot, so far from home?” queried the detective.
“It’s Bank Holiday,” Mrs. Drabdump reminded him in tones of acute surprise. “I always make a hexcursion on Bank Holiday.”
CHAPTER VIII
The New Year brought Mrs. Drabdump a new lodger. He was an old gentleman with a long gray beard. He rented the rooms of the late Mr. Constant, and lived a very retired life. Haunted rooms—or rooms that ought to be haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any self-respect—are supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market. The whole Irish problem might be solved if the spirits of “Mr. Balfour’s victims” would only depreciate the value of property to a point consistent with the support of an agricultural population. But Mrs. Drabdump’s new lodger paid so much for his rooms that he laid himself open to a suspicion of special interest in ghosts. Perhaps he was a member of the Psychical Society. The neighborhood imagined him another mad philanthropist, but as he did not appear to be doing any good to anybody it relented and conceded his sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally stumbled across him in the passage, did not trouble himself to think about him at all. He was too full of other troubles and cares. Though he worked harder than ever, the spirit seemed to have gone out of him. Sometimes he forgot himself in a fine rapture of eloquence—lashing himself up into a divine resentment of injustice or a passion of sympathy with the sufferings of his brethren—but mostly he plodded on in dull, mechanical fashion. He still made brief provincial tours, starring a day here and a day there, and everywhere his admirers remarked how jaded and overworked he looked. There was talk of starting
