CHAPTER V
A REPRESENTATIVE OF LAW AND ORDER
The next morning, information was given to a passing policeman of theevents of the night, and in the course of the day an officer cameround from the local station to learn particulars. Madge received himin solitary state; she had refused Ella's offer to stop away frombusiness to keep her company, declaring that for that day, at anyrate, she would be safe from undesirable intruders.
The officer was a plain-clothes man, middle-aged, imperfectlyeducated, with the stolid, matter-of-fact, rather stupid-lookingcountenance which one is apt to find an attribute of the detective offact, rather than fiction.
"You say you didn't see him?"
"I saw the back of him."
"Hum!" This stands for a sort of a kind of a sniff.
"Would you know him if you saw him again?"
"From the glimpse which I caught of him last night I certainlyshouldn't. It was pretty dark, and he was twenty or thirty yards downthe road when I first caught sight of his back."
"You didn't follow him?"
"We did not."
Madge smiled as she thought of how such a suggestion would have beenreceived had it been made at the time.
"He came in through the back window and left through the front?"
"That's it."
"And he took nothing?"
"No--but he left something behind him--he left this."
Madge produced the half-sheet of paper which Ella had picked up fromthe floor.
"You're sure this was his property?"
"I'm sure it isn't ours, and I'm sure we found it in this room justafter he left it."
The officer took the paper; read it, turned it over and over; lookedit up and down; read it again. Then he gave his mouth a rather comicaltwist; then he looked at Madge with eyes which he probably intended tobe pregnant with meaning.
"Hum!" He paused to cogitate. "I suppose you know there's been aburglary here before?"
"I know nothing of the kind. We have only been here six weeks, and arequite strangers to the place."
"There was. Something more than a year ago. The house was empty at thetime. The man who did it was caught at the job--and our chap gotpretty well knocked about for his pains. But that wasn't the only timewe've had business at this house; our fellows have been here a goodmany times."
"Neither my friend or I had the slightest notion that the house hadsuch a reputation."
"I daresay not. It's been empty a good long time. I expect the storieswhich were told about it were against its letting."
"What sort of stories?"
"All sorts--nonsense, most of them."
"Were the people who lived here named Ossington?"
"Ossington?" The officer screwed his mouth up into the comical twistwhich it seemed he had a trick of giving it. "I believe it was, or, atany rate, something like it. A queer lot they were--very."
"Do you see what's written as a heading on that piece of paper?"
The officer's glance returned to the writing.
"'Tom Ossington's Ghost!'--yes, I noticed it, but I don't know what itmeans--do you?"
"Except that if the name of the people who lived here last wasOssington, it would seem as if last night's affair had some referenceto the house's former occupants."
"Yes--it would look as if it had--when you come to look at it in thatway." He was studying it as if now he had made up his mind tounderstand it clearly. "It looks as if it was some sort of cryptogram,and yet it mightn't be--it's hard to tell." He wagged his head. "I'lltake it to our chaps, and see what they can make of it. Some men arebetter at this sort of thing than others." Folding up the paper heplaced it in his pocket-book. "Am I to understand that you can give nodescription of the burglar--that there's no one you suspect?"
"I don't know that it amounts to suspicion--but there was a manhanging about here in rather a singular fashion whom I can't helpthinking might have had a finger in the pie."
"Can you describe him?"
"He was about my height--I'm five feet six and a half--thick set, andI noticed he walked in a sort of rolling way; I thought he was drunkat first, but I don't believe he was. He kept his hands in histrousers pockets, and he was very shabbily dressed, in an old blackcoat--I believe you call them Chesterfields--which was buttoned downthe front right up to the chin--I doubt if he had a waistcoat; a pairof old patched trousers--and I'm under the impression that his bootswere odd ones. He had an old black billycock hat, with no band on,crammed over his eyes, iron-grey hair, and a fortnight's growth ofwhiskers on his cheeks and chin. He had a half impudent, half hang-dogair--altogether just the sort of person to try his hand at this sortof thing."
"I'll take down that description, if you'll repeat it."
She did repeat it--and he did take it down, with irritating slowness.When she had finished he read what he had written, tapping his teethwith the end of his pencil and looking most important.
"I shouldn't be surprised if you've laid your finger on the veryman--and if we lay our fingers on him before the day is over.You will excuse my saying, miss, that you've got the faculty ofobservation--marked. I couldn't have given a better description of achap myself--and I've been a bit longer at the game than you have. NowI'll just go through the place once more, and then I'll go; and thenin due course you'll hear from us again."
He did go through the place once more--and he did go.
"Now," observed Madge to herself, as she watched him going down theroad, "all that remains, is for us in due course to hear from youagain--to some effect--and that, if you're the sort of blunderbuss Itake you to be, will be never."
Turning from the window, she looked about the room, speaking half injest and half in earnest.
"This is a delightful state of things--truly! It seems as if wecouldn't have found a more undesirable habitation, if we had triedPetticoat Lane. Not the first burglar that's been in the place! Andthe house well known to the police--not to speak of a sinisterreputation in all the country side! Charming! Clover Cottage seems tobe an ideal place of residence for two lone, lorn young women. Theabode of mystery, and, so far as I can make out, a sink of crime, onewonders if it still waits to become the scene of some ghastly murderto give to the situation its crowning touches. I shiver--or, at anyrate, I ought to shiver--when I reflect on the horrors with which Imay be, and probably am, surrounded!"
Ella returned earlier than the day before, and, this time, she camealone. The question burst from her lips the instant she was in thehouse.
"Well, has anything happened?"
"Nothing--of importance. It's true the police have been, but as itappears that they've been here over and over again before, that's atrifle. There's been at least one previous burglar upon the premises,and it seems that the house has been known to the police--and to thewhole neighbourhood--for years, in the most disreputable possiblesense."
Ella could but gasp.
"Madge!"
The statements which the officer had made were retailed, with commentsand additions--and, it may be added, interpolations. Ella was moreimpressed even than Madge had been--being divided between concern andindignation.
"To think that we should have been inveigled into taking such a place!We ought to claim damages from those scamps of agents who let it uswithout a word of warning. You can't think how I have been worryingabout you the whole day long; the idea of our being together in theplace is bad enough, but the idea of your being alone in it is worse.What that policeman has said, settles it. Jack may laugh if he likes,but my mind is made up that I won't stop a moment longer in the housethan I can help; the notion of your being all those hours alone herewould worry me into the grave if nothing else did--and so I shall tellhim when he comes."
Madge's manner was more equable.
"He will laugh at you, you'll find; and, unless I'm in error, here heis to do it."
As she spoke there was a vigorous knock at the front door.