Part 6

“Case? Why, I’ve been telling you.” And again Mrs. Geldard repeated her vague catalogue of sufferings, assuring Hewitt that she was determined to have the best advice and assistance, and that therefore she had come to him. In the end Hewitt answered: “Put concisely, Mrs. Geldard, I take it that your case is simply this. Mr. Geldard is in business as, I think you told me, a general agent and broker, and keeps an office in the city. You have had various disagreements with him--not an uncommon thing, unfortunately, between married people--and you have entertained certain indefinite suspicions of his behaviour. Yesterday you went so far as to go to his office soon after he should have been there, and found him absent and the office shut up. You waited some time, and called again, but the door was still locked, and the caretaker of the building assured you that Mr. Geldard usually kept his office thus shut. You knocked repeatedly, and called through the keyhole, but got no answer. This morning you even followed your husband and saw him enter his office; but when, a little later, you yourself attempted to enter it, you once more found it locked and apparently tenantless. From this you conclude that he must have left his rooms by some back way, and you say you are determined to find out where he goes and what he does during the day. For this purpose you, I gather, wish me to watch him and report his whole day’s proceedings to you?”

“Yes, of course; as I said.”

“I’m afraid the state of my other engagements just at present will scarcely admit of that. Indeed, to speak quite frankly, this mere watching, especially of husband or wife, is not a sort of business that I care to undertake, except as a necessary part of some definite, tangible case. But apart from that, will you allow me to advise you? Not professionally, I mean, but merely as a man of the world. Why come to third parties with these vague suspicions? Family divisions of this sort, with all sorts of covert mistrust and suspicion, are bad things at best, and once carried as far as you talk of carrying this, go beyond peaceable remedy. Why not deal frankly and openly with your husband? Why not ask him plainly what he has been doing during the days you were unable to get into his office? You will probably find it all capable of a very simple and innocent explanation.”

“Am I to understand, then,” Mrs. Geldard said, bridling, “that you refuse to help me?”

“I have not refused to help you,” Hewitt replied. “On the contrary, I am trying to help you now. Did your husband ever follow any other profession than the one he is now engaged in?”

“Once he was a mechanical engineer, but he got very few clients, and it didn’t pay.”

“There, now, is a suggestion. Would it be very unlikely that your husband, trained mechanician as he is, may have reverted so far to his old profession as to be conceiving some new invention? And in that case, what more probable than that he would lock himself securely in his office to work out his idea, and take no notice of visitors knocking, in order to admit nobody who might learn something of what he was doing? Does he keep a clerk or office boy?”

“No, he never has since he left the mechanical engineering.”

“Well, Mrs. Geldard, I’m sorry I have no more time now, but I must earnestly repeat my advice. Come to an understanding with your husband in a straightforward way as soon as you possibly can. There are plenty of private inquiry offices about where they will watch anybody, and do almost anything, without any inquiry into their clients’ motives, and with a single eye to fees. I charge you no fee, and advise you to treat your husband with frankness.”

Mrs. Geldard did not seem particularly satisfied, though Hewitt’s rejection of a consultation fee somewhat softened her. She left protesting that Hewitt didn’t know the sort of man she had to deal with, and that, one way or another, she must have an explanation.

“Come, we’ll get to lunch,” said Hewitt. “I’m afraid my suggestion as to Mr. Geldard’s probable occupation in his office wasn’t very brilliant, but it was the pleasantest I could think of for the moment, and the main thing was to pacify the lady. One does no good by aggravating a misunderstanding of that sort.”

“Can you make any conjecture,” I said, “at what the trouble really is?”

Hewitt raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “There’s no telling,” he said. “An angry, jealous, pragmatical woman, apparently, this Mrs. Geldard, and it’s impossible to judge at first sight how much she really knows and how much she imagines. I don’t suppose she’ll take my advice. She seems to have worked herself into a state of rancour that must burst out violently somewhere. But lunch is the present business. Come.”

The next day I spent at a friend’s house a little way out of town, so that it was not till the following morning, about the same time, that I learned from Hewitt that Mrs. Geldard had called again.

“Yes,” he said; “she seems to have taken my advice in her own way, which wasn’t a judicious one. When I suggested that she should speak frankly to her husband, I meant her to do it in a reasonably amicable mood. Instead of that, she appears to have flown at his throat, so to speak, with all the bitterness at her tongue’s disposal. The natural result was a row. The man slanged back, the woman threatened divorce, and the man threatened to leave the country altogether. And so yesterday Mrs. Geldard was here again to get me to follow and watch him. I had to decline once more, and got something rather like a slanging myself for my pains. She seemed to think I was in league with her husband in some way. In the end I promised--more to get rid of her than anything else--to take the case in hand if ever there were anything really tangible to go upon; if her husband really did desert her, you know, or anything like that. If, in fact, there were anything more for me to consider than these spiteful suspicions.”

“I suppose,” I said, “she had nothing more to tell you than she had before?”

“Very little. She seems to have startled Geldard, however, by a chance shot. It seems that she once employed a maid, whom she subsequently dismissed, because, as she tells me, the young woman was a great deal too good-looking, and because she observed, or fancied she observed, signs of some secret understanding between her maid and her husband. Moreover, it was her husband who discovered this maid and introduced her into the house, and furthermore, he did all he could to induce Mrs. Geldard not to dismiss her. He even hinted that her dismissal might cause serious trouble, and Mrs. Geldard says it is chiefly since this maid has left the house that his movements have become so mysterious. Well it seems that in the heat of yesterday’s quarrel Mrs. Geldard, quite at random, asked tauntingly how many letters Geldard had received from Emma Trennatt lately--Emma Trennatt was the girl’s name. This chance shot seemed to hit the target. Geldard (so his wife tells me, at any rate) winced visibly, paled a little, and dodged the question. But for the rest of the quarrel he appeared much less at ease, and made more than one attempt to find out how much his wife really knew of the correspondence she had spoken of. But as her reference to it was of course the wildest possible fluke, he got little guidance, while his better-half waxed savage in her triumph, and they parted on wild-cat terms. She came straight here, and evidently thought that after Geldard’s reception of her allusion to correspondence with Emma Trennatt--which she seemed to regard as final and conclusive confirmation of all her jealousies--I should take the case in hand at once. When she found me still disinclined, she gave me a trifling sample of her rhetoric, as no doubt commonly supplied to Mr. Geldard. She said in effect that she had only come to me because she meant having the best assistance possible, but that she didn’t think much of me after all, and one man was as bad as another, and so on. I think she was a trifle angrier because I remained calm and civil. And she went away this time without the least reference to a consultation fee one way or another.”

I laughed. “Probably,” I said, “she went off to some agent who’ll watch as long as she likes to pay.”

“Quite possibly.” But we were quite wrong. Hewitt took his hat, and we made for the staircase. As we opened the landing-door there were hurried feet on the stairs below, and as it shut behind Mrs. Geldard’s bonnet-load of pink flowers hove up before us. She was in a state of fierce alarm and excitement that had oddly enough something of triumph in it, as of the woman who says, “I told you so.” Hewitt gave a tragic groan under his breath.

“Here’s a nice state of things I’m in for now, Mr. Hewitt,” she began abruptly, “through your refusing to do anything for me while there was time though I was ready to pay you well as I told your young man but no, you wouldn’t listen to anything, and seemed to think you knew my business better than I could tell you and now you’ve caused this state of affairs by delay perhaps you’ll take the case in hand now?”

“But you haven’t told me what has happened--” Hewitt began, whereat the lady instantly rejoined, with a shrill pretence of a laugh, “Happened? Why, what do you suppose has happened after what I have told you over and over again? My precious husband’s gone clean away, that’s all. He’s deserted me and gone nobody knows where. That’s what’s happened. You said that if he did anything of that sort you’d take the case up; so now I’ve come to see if you’ll keep your promise. Not that it’s likely to be of much use _now.”_

We turned back into Hewitt’s private office, and Mrs. Geldard told her story. Disentangled from irrelevances, repetitions, opinions and incidental observations, it was this. After the quarrel Geldard had gone to business as usual, and had not been seen nor heard of since. After her yesterday’s interview with Hewitt, Mrs. Geldard had called at her husband’s office and found it shut as before. She went home again, and waited, but he never returned home that evening, nor all night. In the morning she had gone to the office once more, and finding it still shut, had told the caretaker that her husband was missing, and insisted on his bringing his own key and opening it for her inspection. Nobody was there, and Mrs. Geldard was astonished to find folded and laid on a cupboard shelf the entire suit of clothes that her husband had worn when he left home on the morning of the previous day. She also found in the waste-paper basket the fragments of two or three envelopes addressed to her husband, which she brought for Hewitt’s inspection. They were in the handwriting of the girl Trennatt, and with them Mrs. Geldard had discovered a small fragment of one of the letters, a mere scrap, but sufficient to show part of the signature “Emma,” and two or three of a row of crosses running beneath, such as are employed to represent kisses. These things she had brought with her.

Hewitt examined them slightly, and then asked, “Can I have a photograph of your husband, Mrs. Geldard?”

She immediately produced, not only a photograph of her husband, but also one of the girl Trennatt, which she said belonged to the cook. Hewitt complimented her on her foresight. “And now,” he said, “I think we’ll go and take a look at Mr. Geldard’s office, if we may. Of course I shall follow him up now.” Hewitt made a sign to me, which I interpreted as asking whether I would care to accompany him. I assented with a nod, for the case seemed likely to be interesting.

I omit most of Mrs. Geldard’s talk by the way, which was almost ceaseless, mostly compounded of useless repetition, and very tiresome.

The office was on a third floor in a large building in Finsbury Pavement. The caretaker made no difficulty in admitting us. There were two rooms, neither very large, and one of them at the back very small indeed. In this was a small locked door.

“That leads on to the small staircase, sir,” the caretaker said in response to Hewitt’s inquiry. “The staircase leads down to the basement, and it ain’t used much ’cept by the cleaners.”

“If I went down this back staircase,” Hewitt pursued, “I suppose I should have no difficulty in gaining the street?”

“Not a bit, sir. You’d have to go a little way round to get into Finsbury Pavement, but there’s a passage leads straight from the bottom of the stairs out to Moorfields behind.”

“Yes,” remarked Mrs. Geldard bitterly, when the caretaker had left the room, “that’s the way he’s been leaving the office every day, and in disguise, too.” She pointed to the cupboard where her husband’s clothes lay. “Pretty plain proof that he was ashamed of his doings, whatever they were.”

“Come, come,” Hewitt answered deprecatingly, “we’ll hope there’s nothing to be ashamed of--at any rate till there’s proof of it. There’s no proof as yet that your husband has been disguising. A great many men who rent offices, I believe, keep dress clothes at them--I do it myself--for convenience in case of an unexpected invitation, or such other eventuality. We may find that he returned here last night, put on his evening dress, and went somewhere dining. Illness, or fifty accidents, may have kept him from home.”

But Mrs. Geldard was not to be softened by any such suggestion, which I could see Hewitt had chiefly thrown out by way of pacifying the lady, and allaying her bitterness as far as he could, in view of a possible reconciliation when things were cleared up.

“_That_ isn’t very likely,” she said. “If he kept a dress suit here openly, I should know of it; and if he kept it here unknown to me, what did he want it for? If he went out in dress clothes last night, who did he go with? Who do you suppose, after seeing those envelopes and that piece of the letter?”

“Well, well, we shall see,” Hewitt replied. “May I turn out the pockets of these clothes?”

“Certainly; there’s nothing in them of importance,” Mrs. Geldard said. “I looked before I came to you.”

Nevertheless Hewitt turned them out. “Here is a cheque-book with a number of cheques remaining. No counterfoils filled in, which is awkward. Bankers, the London Amalgamated. We will call there presently. An ivory pocket paper-knife. A sovereign purse--empty.” Hewitt placed the articles on the table as he named them. “Gold pencil case, ivory folding rule, russia-leather card-case.” He turned to Mrs. Geldard. “There is no pocket-book,” he said, “no pocket-knife and no watch, and there are no keys. Did Mr. Geldard usually carry any of these things?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Geldard replied, “he carried all four.” Hewitt’s simple, methodical calmness, and his plain disregard of her former volubility, appeared by this to have disciplined Mrs. Geldard into a businesslike brevity and directness of utterance.

“As to the watch now. Can you describe it?”

“Oh, it was only a cheap one. He had a gold one stolen--or at any rate he told me so--and since then he has only carried a very common sort of silver one, without a chain.”

“The keys?”

“I only know there _was_ a bunch of keys. Some of them fitted drawers and bureaux at home, and others, I suppose, fitted locks in this office.”

“What of the pocket-knife?”

“That was a very uncommon one. It was a present, as a matter of fact, from an engineering friend, who had had it made specially. It was large, with a tortoise-shell handle and a silver plate with his initials. There was only one ordinary knife-blade in it; all the other implements were small tools or things of that kind. There was a small pair of silver calipers, for instance.”

“Like these?” Hewitt suggested, producing those he used for measuring drawers and cabinets in search of secret receptacles.

“Yes, like those. And there were folding steel compasses, a tiny flat spanner, a little spirit level, and a number of other small instruments of that sort. It was very well made indeed; he used to say that it could not have been made for five pounds.”

“Indeed?” Hewitt cast his eyes about the two rooms. “I see no signs of books here, Mrs. Geldard--account-books I mean, of course. Your husband must have kept account-books, I take it?”

“Yes, naturally, he must have done. I never saw them, of course, but every business man keeps books.” Then after a pause Mrs. Geldard continued: “And they’re gone too. I never thought of _that._ But there, I might have known as much. Who can trust a man safely if his own wife can’t? But _I_ won’t shield him. Whatever he’s been doing with his clients’ money he’ll have to answer for himself. Thank Heaven I’ve enough to live on of my own without being dependent on a creature like him! But think of the disgrace! My husband nothing better than a common thief--swindling his clients and making away with his books when he can’t go on any longer! But he shall be punished, oh yes; _I’ll_ see he’s punished, if once I find him!”

Hewitt thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you know any of your husband’s clients, Mrs. Geldard?”

“No,” she answered, rather snappishly, “I don’t. I’ve told you he never let me know anything of his business--never anything at all; and very good reason he had too, that’s certain.”

“Then probably you do not happen to know the contents of these drawers?” Hewitt pursued, tapping the writing-table as he spoke.

“Oh, there’s nothing of importance in them--at any rate in the unlocked ones. I looked at all of them this morning when I first came.”

The table was of the ordinary pedestal pattern with four drawers at each side and a ninth in the middle at the top, and of very ordinary quality. The only locked drawer was the third from the top on the left-hand side. Hewitt pulled out one drawer after another. In one was a tin half full of tobacco; in another a few cigars at the bottom of a box; in a third a pile of notepaper headed with the address of the office, and rather dusty; another was empty; still another contained a handful of string. The top middle drawer rather reminded me of a similar drawer of my own at my last newspaper office, for it contained several pipes; but my own were mostly briars, whereas these were all clays.

“There’s nothing really so satisfactory,” Hewitt said, as he lifted and examined each pipe by turn, “to a seasoned smoker as a well-used clay. Most such men keep one or more of them for strictly private use.” There was nothing noticeable about these pipes except that they were uncommonly dirty, but Hewitt scrutinised each before returning it to the drawer. Then he turned to Mrs. Geldard and said: “As to the bank now--the London Amalgamated, Mrs. Geldard. Are you known there personally?”

“Oh, yes; my husband gave them authority to pay cheques signed by me up to a certain amount, and I often do it for household expenses, or when he happens to be away.”

“Then perhaps it will be best for you to go alone,” Hewitt responded. “Of course they will never, as a general thing, give any person information as to the account of a customer; but perhaps, as you are known to them, and hold your husband’s authority to draw cheques, they may tell you something. What I want to find out is, of course, whether your husband drew from the bank all his remaining balance yesterday, or any large sum. You must go alone, ask for the manager, and tell him that you have seen nothing of Mr. Geldard since he left for business yesterday morning. Mind, you are not to appear angry, or suspicious, or anything of that sort, and you mustn’t say you are employing me to bring him back from an elopement. That will shut up the channel of information at once. Hostile inquiries they’ll never answer, even by the smallest hint, except after legal injunction. You can be as distressed and as alarmed as you please. Your husband has disappeared since yesterday morning, and you’ve no notion what has become of him; that is your tale, and a perfectly true one. You would like to know whether or not he has withdrawn his balance, or a considerable sum, since that would indicate whether or not his absence was intentional and premeditated.”

Mrs. Geldard understood and undertook to make the inquiry with all discretion. The bank was not far, and it was arranged that she should return to the office with the result.

As soon as she had left, Hewitt turned to the pedestal table and probed the keyhole of the locked drawer with the small stiletto attached to his penknife. “This seems to be a common sort of lock,” he said. “I could probably open it with a bent nail. But the whole table is a cheap sort of thing. Perhaps there is an easier way.”

He drew the unlocked drawer above completely out, passed his hand into the opening and felt about. “Yes,” he said, “it’s just as I hoped--as it usually is in pedestal tables not of the best quality; the partition between the drawers doesn’t go more than two-thirds of the way back, and I can drop my hand into the drawer below. But I can’t feel anything there--it seems empty.”

He withdrew his hand and we tilted the whole table backward, so as to cause whatever lay in the drawers to slide to the back. This dodge was successful. Hewitt reinserted his hand and withdrew it with two orderly heaps of papers, each held together by a metal clip.

The papers in each clip, on examination, proved to be all of an identical character, with the exception of dates. They were, in fact, rent receipts. Those for the office, which had been given quarterly, were put back in their place with scarcely a glance, and the others Hewitt placed on the table before him. Each ran, apart from dates, in this fashion: “Received from Mr. J. Cookson 15_s_., one month’s rent of stable at 3, Dragon Yard, Benton Street, to”--here followed the date. “Also rent, feed and care of horse in own stable as agreed, £2.--W. Gask.” The receipts were ill-written, and here and there ill-spelt. Hewitt put the last of the receipts in his pocket, and returned the others to the drawer. “Either,” he said, “Mr. Cookson is a client who gets Mr. Geldard to hire stables for him, which may not be likely, or Mr. Geldard calls himself Mr. Cookson when he goes driving--possibly with Miss Trennatt. We shall see.”

The pedestal table put in order again, Hewitt took the poker and raked in the fireplace. It was summer, and behind the bars was a sort of screen of cartridge paper with a frilled edge, and behind this various odds and ends had been thrown--spent matches, trade circulars crumpled up, and torn paper. There were also the remains of several cigars, some only half smoked, and one almost whole. The torn paper Hewitt examined piece by piece, and finally sorted out a number of pieces, which he set to work to arrange on the blotting pad. They formed a complete note, written in the same hand as were the envelopes already found by Mrs. Geldard--that of the girl Emma Trennatt. It corresponded also with the solitary fragment of another letter which had accompanied them, by way of having a number of crosses below the signature, and it ran thus:--

_Tuesday Night._

_Dear Sam,--To-morrow, to carry. Not late because people are coming for flowers. What you did was no good. The smoke leaks worse than ever, and F. thinks you must light a new pipe or else stop smoking altogether for a bit. Uncle is anxious._

_Emma._

Then followed the crosses, filling one line and nearly half the next--seventeen in all.