Blind Policy

“Eh? Yes, I suppose so. The work of a long life, sir. But very dusty all over the house. What did you say was the name of the people you wanted?”

“I – that is,” stammered Chester, confusedly, “I do not know their name. Some patients whom I want to find out.”

“Are you a doctor, sir?” said the old man, looking at his visitor with a benevolent smile. “Grand profession. I should have liked to have been a doctor. But is not that a very vague description? Names are so useful for distinguishing one person, place, or thing, from another. But it was in this street, you say?”

“Well – er – no, I am not sure,” said Chester, hurriedly.

“Dear me! that is rather perplexing,” said the old man, taking off his spectacles and beginning to wipe them upon the tail of his dressing-gown. “But,” he added, as if relieved, “the Directory would be of no use if you do not know the name.”

“None whatever,” said Chester, who was smarting with the thought that this pleasant old gentleman must take him for a lunatic. “Pray forgive me for troubling you in this unceremonious way.”

“Oh, not at all, my dear sir, not at all. I have so few visitors, though,” he added, “as you see I am surrounded by old friends.”

“The same style of house – the same sort of hall,” thought Chester, as he went out after a few more words had been exchanged. “Could it have been in this street?”

He looked up sharply at a heavy-faced butler and a tall, smart, powdered-headed footman, who were standing at the door of the next house, doing nothing, with the air of two men whose employers were out.

Chester looked eagerly at them and passed by, but the door was nearly closed, and he could not see inside.

His sharp look was returned with interest, the two men evidently expecting him to come up the steps and address them, but he went on for a short distance in an undecided way, thinking deeply, and trying hard to see through the mental mist which shut him in. But a short time before he had felt convinced that he had found the house and been disappointed; now he felt quite as sure that the mansion where the two servants were standing must be the place. He had no special reason for coming to the conclusion, but all the same a curious feeling of attraction made him slacken his pace, angry and annoyed the while that he had not stopped and spoken to the men.

“Great heavens! What a vacillating moral coward I have grown,” he said to himself. “What would have been easier?”

He said this but felt that the task was terribly hard, for it seemed such a childish thing to do – to go about asking folk if that was the house where some people lived who had fetched him to attend a man who had been shot, and kept him a prisoner for days and days before drugging him and having him shut up in a cab to be driven about in the middle of the night.

“Why, if I could explain all this to them,” he said to himself at last, “they’d think I was a harmless kind of madman, troubled with memories of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, which I was trying to drag into everyday life like a Barber’s hundredth brother, or a one-eyed Calendar. Come, come, old fellow,” he continued, as he mentally apostrophised himself; “go back home and prescribe for yourself, and then begin to show someone that you have been suffering from a strange mental vagary, brought about by over-excitement. She will believe it in time, and all may come right again. Ah! how like.”

He started and hurried after an open carriage in which two ladies were seated. He only saw the profile of one of them very slightly, and her back as she passed, but there was a turn of the figure – a particularly graceful air, as she leaned forward to give some instruction to the coachman – which struck him as being exactly similar to attitudes he had seen Marion assume again and again when attending upon her brother.

He jumped into a cab and told the man to follow the victoria, with the result that the latter came to a standstill in front of one of the fashionable West-End drapery establishments.

Chester was close up as the lady alighted, and he sprang out excitedly to go and speak to her.

There was every opportunity, for the carriage drove on with her companion, and she crossed the pavement alone, to walk a few steps alone in front of the great plate-glass window, gazing carelessly in at the various costumes displayed.

“A woman after all,” he said to himself, bitterly annoyed at what he considered her frivolity in thinking of dress at a time when her brother was in all probability suffering still.

“But it is their nature, or the result of their education,” he said the next minute, as he went close up behind her, and saw her face reflected clearly in the long series of mirrors at the back.

Chapter Eleven.

Mr Roach Lowers Himself

“Bah!” ejaculated Chester in his rage and despair, as he swung round and hurried away. “Fool, idiot! No more like her than that miserable flower-seller is. Am I suffering from the shock of the drug they gave me? Well, if I am, she must be found all the same, for I cannot go on like this and live!”

He hurried along, without heeding which way he went, and as if by instinct made for his own house, reached it, started as if in surprise, and then turned to enter, but altered his mind after a pause, and drew the door to, after which he walked swiftly away in the direction of Westminster.

For the meeting had raised thoughts which he felt that he would only obliterate by plunging once more into the mazes of his wild search.

He was not long in reaching the old street which had so taken up his attention before, and he looked long and attentively at the mansion adjoining that occupied by the collector. The contrast was curious, the one with bright, well-curtained windows, the door glistening in its fresh graining and varnish, the other dim, unpainted, looking as if it were quite unoccupied, the very steps as if they had not been cleaned for years.

Chester went and studied a Directory, and with the name Clareborough upon his lips, he determined, after passing through the street two or three times, to risk making a call.

“Why should I mind?” he muttered. “If I am wrong, I have only made a mistake.”

He walked on till he reached the house, perfectly unconscious that the footman was standing a little back from one of the narrow windows, and after having his attention drawn to the vacillating, rather haggard personage who had been taking so much interest in the house, was ready to look upon him with suspicion.

“Begging letter dodges, or something to sell,” said the footman to himself, as the visitors’ bell was rung, and after waiting a sufficient time to suggest that he had come from downstairs, the fellow opened the door, to receive Chester with a calm stare.

“Mr Clareborough in?”

“Not at home, sir.”

“Mr Robert is, of course?”

“Out of town, sir.”

“Well, I must see somebody,” said Chester, who had been checked for the moment by the announcement that Mr Robert was out of town, but encouraged by the fact that two shots went home. “Ask Mr Paddy if he will see me.”

The nickname made the footman raise his eyebrows, but he replied coolly —

“Not at home, sir.”

“Well, then, one of the ladies.”

“On the Continent, sir.”

“Tut, tut, how tiresome!” cried Chester, impatiently. “Look here, my man; how is Mr Robert?”

“Quite well, thank you, sir,” said the man, superciliously.

Chester stared at the man. He had evidently been schooled what to say, and for the moment the visitor hesitated, but recovering his sang-froid the next moment, he said —

“Rather strange that, after so serious an accident.”

At that moment the butler came forward from the back of the hall, pulling the door a little more open, and Chester drew a deep breath full of satisfaction, as he caught sight of one of the statues and a chair, on the back of which was emblazoned the same crest as he had seen upon the seal.

“What is it, Orthur,” said the butler in a deep, mellow voice suggestive of port wine.

“Gentleman asking to see Mr Robert, sir.”

“Yes, I particularly wish to see him,” said Chester. “I am the medical man who attended him after his accident.”

“I beg pardon, sir.”

“I say I am the medical man who attended him after his late accident, and I wish to see my patient again.”

The butler glared at the speaker in a heavy, solemn way, and then turned slowly to his subordinate, who raised his eyebrows and drew down the corners of his lips.