So it proved; for in the morning I found my friend standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire and a smile of complete satisfaction upon his face.

“How’s this, Watson?” he cried, picking up the paper from the table. “‘High red house with white stone facings. Third floor. Second window left. After dusk. G.’ That is definite enough. I think after breakfast we must make a little reconnaissance of Mrs. Warren’s neighbourhood. Ah, Mrs. Warren! what news do you bring us this morning?”

Our client had suddenly burst into the room with an explosive energy which told of some new and momentous development.

“It’s a police matter, Mr. Holmes!” she cried. “I’ll have no more of it! He shall pack out of there with his baggage. I would have gone straight up and told him so, only I thought it was but fair to you to take your opinion first. But I’m at the end of my patience, and when it comes to knocking my old man about ”

“Knocking Mr. Warren about?”

“Using him roughly, anyway.”

“But who used him roughly?”

“Ah! that’s what we want to know! It was this morning, sir. Mr. Warren is a timekeeper at Morton and Waylight’s, in Tottenham Court Road. He has to be out of the the house before seven. Well, this morning he had not gone ten paces down the road when two men came up behind him, threw a coat over his head, and bundled him into a cab that was beside the curb. They drove him an hour, and then opened the door and shot him out. He lay in the roadway so shaken in his wits that he never saw what became of the cab. When he picked himself up he found he was on Hampstead Heath; so he took a bus home, and there he lies now on the sofa, while I came straight round to tell you what had happened.”

“Most interesting,” said Holmes. “Did he observe the appearance of these men — did he hear them talk?”

“No; he is clean dazed. He just knows that he was lifted up as if by magic and dropped as if by magic. Two at least were in it, and maybe three.”

“And you connect this attack with your lodger?”

“Well, we’ve lived there fifteen years and no such happenings ever came before. I’ve had enough of him. Money’s not everything. I’ll have him out of my house before the day is done.”

“Wait a bit, Mrs. Warren. Do nothing rash. I begin to think that this affair may be very much more important than appeared at first sight. It is clear now that some danger is threatening your lodger. It is equally clear that his enemies, lying in wait for him near your door, mistook your husband for him in the foggy morning light. On discovering their mistake they released him. What they would have done had it not been a mistake, we can only conjecture.”

“Well, what am I to do, Mr. Holmes?”

“I have a great fancy to see this lodger of yours, Mrs. Warren.”

“I don’t see how that is to be managed, unless you break in the door. I always hear him unlock it as I go down the stair after I leave the tray.”

She came to the clearing, but he was not there. She had only half expected him. The pheasant chicks were running lightly abroad, light as insects, from the coops where the fellow hens clucked anxiously. Connie sat and watched them, and waited. She only waited. Even the chicks she hardly saw. She waited.

The time passed with dream–like slowness, and he did not come. She had only half expected him. He never came in the afternoon. She must go home to tea. But she had to force herself to leave.

As she went home, a fine drizzle of rain fell.

‘Is it raining again?’ said Clifford, seeing her shake her hat.

‘Just drizzle.’

She poured tea in silence, absorbed in a sort of obstinacy. She did want to see the keeper today, to see if it were really real. If it were really real.

‘Shall I read a little to you afterwards?’ said Clifford.

She looked at him. Had he sensed something?

‘The spring makes me feel queer—I thought I might rest a little,’ she said.

‘Just as you like. Not feeling really unwell, are you?’

‘No! Only rather tired—with the spring. Will you have Mrs Bolton to play something with you?’

‘No! I think I’ll listen in.’

She heard the curious satisfaction in his voice. She went upstairs to her bedroom. There she heard the loudspeaker begin to bellow, in an idiotically velveteen–genteel sort of voice, something about a series of street–cries, the very cream of genteel affectation imitating old criers. She pulled on her old violet coloured mackintosh, and slipped out of the house at the side door.

The drizzle of rain was like a veil over the world, mysterious, hushed, not cold. She got very warm as she hurried across the park. She had to open her light waterproof.

The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and half–open buds, half unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed themselves, and the green things on earth seemed to hum with greenness.

There was still no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone under the mother–hens, only one or two last adventurous ones still dibbed about in the dryness under the straw roof shelter. And they were doubtful of themselves.

So! He still had not been. He was staying away on purpose. Or perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps she should go to the cottage and see.

But she was born to wait. She opened the hut with her key. It was all tidy, the corn put in the bin, the blankets folded on the shelf, the straw neat in a corner; a new bundle of straw. The hurricane lamp hung on a nail. The table and chair had been put back where she had lain.

She sat down on a stool in the doorway. How still everything was! The fine rain blew very softly, filmily, but the wind made no noise. Nothing made any sound. The trees stood like powerful beings, dim, twilit, silent and alive. How alive everything was!