Part 101

‘Warwick Street, Charing Cross--that’s where he is.’

‘Well, to be sure--strange! A very dear friend of mine used to live at number fifty-two in that very same street.’

‘Edward lives at number forty-nine--how very near being the same house!’ said the old farmer, pleased in spite of himself.

‘Very,’ said Manston. ‘Well, I suppose we had better step along a little quicker, Mr. Springrove; the parson’s bell has just begun.’

‘Number forty-nine,’ he murmured.

4. MARCH THE TWELFTH

Edward received Owen’s letter in due time, but on account of his daily engagements he could not attend to any request till the clock had struck five in the afternoon. Rushing then from his office in Westminster, he called a hansom and proceeded to Hoxton. A few minutes later he knocked at the door of number forty-one, Charles Square, the old lodging of Mrs. Manston.

A tall man who would have looked extremely handsome had he not been clumsily and closely wrapped up in garments that were much too elderly in style for his years, stood at the corner of the quiet square at the same instant, having, too, alighted from a cab, that had been driven along Old Street in Edward’s rear. He smiled confidently when Springrove knocked.

Nobody came to the door. Springrove knocked again.

This brought out two people--one at the door he had been knocking upon, the other from the next on the right.

‘Is Mr. Brown at home?’ said Springrove.

‘No, sir.’

‘When will he be in?’

‘Quite uncertain.’

‘Can you tell me where I may find him?’

‘No. O, here he is coming, sir. That’s Mr. Brown.’

Edward looked down the pavement in the direction pointed out by the woman, and saw a man approaching. He proceeded a few steps to meet him.

Edward was impatient, and to a certain extent still a countryman, who had not, after the manner of city men, subdued the natural impulse to speak out the ruling thought without preface. He said in a quiet tone to the stranger, ‘One word with you--do you remember a lady lodger of yours of the name of Mrs. Manston?’

Mr. Brown half closed his eyes at Springrove, somewhat as if he were looking into a telescope at the wrong end.

‘I have never let lodgings in my life,’ he said, after his survey.

‘Didn’t you attend an inquest a year and a half ago, at Carriford?’

‘Never knew there was such a place in the world, sir; and as to lodgings, I have taken acres first and last during the last thirty years, but I have never let an inch.’

‘I suppose there is some mistake,’ Edward murmured, and turned away. He and Mr. Brown were now opposite the door next to the one he had knocked at. The woman who was still standing there had heard the inquiry and the result of it.

‘I expect it is the other Mr. Brown, who used to live there, that you want, sir,’ she said. ‘The Mr. Brown that was inquired for the other day?’

‘Very likely that is the man,’ said Edward, his interest reawakening.

‘He couldn’t make a do of lodging-letting here, and at last he went to Cornwall, where he came from, and where his brother still lived, who had often asked him to come home again. But there was little luck in the change; for after London they say he couldn’t stand the rainy west winds they get there, and he died in the December following. Will you step into the passage?’

‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Edward, going in. ‘But perhaps you remember a Mrs. Manston living next door to you?’

‘O yes,’ said the landlady, closing the door. ‘The lady who was supposed to have met with such a horrible fate, and was alive all the time. I saw her the other day.’