Armadale

'Perhaps they know her at the private door?' suggested Pedgift Junior.

'Perhaps they do,' said the yellow young woman, and shut the door in his face.

'Rather a quick-tempered young person that, sir,' said Pedgift. 'I congratulate Mrs. Mandeville on not being acquainted with her.' He led the way, as he spoke, to Doctor Downward's side of the premises, and rang the bell.

The door was opened this time by a man in a shabby livery. He, too, stared when Mrs. Mandeville's name was mentioned; and he, too, knew of no such person in the house.

'Very odd,' said Pedgift, appealing to Allan.

'What is odd?' asked a softly stepping, softly speaking gentleman in black, suddenly appearing on the threshold of the parlor door.

Pedgift Junior politely explained the circumstances, and begged to know whether he had the pleasure of speaking to Doctor Downward.

The doctor bowed. If the expression may be pardoned, he was one of those carefully constructed physicians in whom the public—especially the female public—implicitly trust. He had the necessary bald head, the necessary double eyeglass, the necessary black clothes, and the necessary blandness of manner, all complete. His voice was soothing, his ways were deliberate, his smile was confidential. What particular branch of his profession Doctor Downward followed was not indicated on his door-plate; but he had utterly mistaken his vocation if he was not a ladies' medical man.

'Are you quite sure there is no mistake about the name?' asked the doctor, with a strong underlying anxiety in his manner. 'I have known very serious inconvenience to arise sometimes from mistakes about names. No? There is really no mistake? In that case, gentlemen, I can only repeat what my servant has already told you. Don't apologize, pray. Good-morning.' The doctor withdrew as noiselessly as he had appeared; the man in the shabby livery silently opened the door; and Allan and his companion found themselves in the street again.

'Mr. Armadale,' said Pedgift, 'I don't know how you feel; I feel puzzled.'

'That's awkward,' returned Allan. 'I was just going to ask you what we ought to do next.'

'I don't like the look of the place, the look of the shop-woman, or the look of the doctor,' pursued the other. 'And yet I can't say I think they are deceiving us; I can't say I think they really know Mrs. Mandeville's name.'

The impressions of Pedgift Junior seldom misled him; and they had not misled him in this case. The caution which had dictated Mrs. Oldershaw's private removal from Bayswater was the caution which frequently overreaches itself. It had warned her to trust nobody at Pimlico with the secret of the name she had assumed as Miss Gwilt's reference; but it had entirely failed to prepare her for the emergency that had really happened. In a word, Mrs. Oldershaw had provided for everything except for the one unimaginable contingency of an after-inquiry into the character of Miss Gwilt.

'We must do something,' said Allan; 'it seems useless to stop here.'

Nobody had ever yet caught Pedgift Junior at the end of his resources; and Allan failed to catch him at the end of them now. 'I quite agree with you, sir,' he said; 'we must do something. We'll cross-examine the cabman.'

The cabman proved to be immovable. Charged with mistaking the place, he pointed to the empty shop window. 'I don't know what you may have seen, gentlemen,' he remarked; 'but there's the only shop window I ever saw with nothing at all inside it. That fixed the place in my mind at the time, and I know it again when I see it.' Charged with mistaking the person or the day, or the house at which he had taken the person up, the cabman proved to be still unassailable. The servant who fetched him was marked as a girl well known on the stand. The day was marked as the unluckiest working-day he had had since the first of the year; and the lady was marked as having had her money ready at the right moment (which not one elderly lady in a hundred usually had), and having paid him his fare on demand without disputing it (which not one elderly lady in a hundred usually did). 'Take my number, gentlemen,' concluded the cabman, 'and pay me for my time; and what I've said to you, I'll swear to anywhere.'

Pedgift made a note in his pocket-book of the man's number. Having added to it the name of the street, and the names on the two brass plates, he quietly opened the cab door. 'We are quite in the dark, thus far,' he said. 'Suppose we grope our way back to the hotel?'

He spoke and looked more seriously than usual The mere fact of 'Mrs. Mandeville's' having changed her lodging without telling any one where she was going, and without leaving any address at which letters could be forwarded to her—which the jealous malignity of Mrs. Milroy had interpreted as being undeniably suspicious in itself—had produced no great impression on the more impartial judgment of Allan's solicitor. People frequently left their lodgings in a private manner, with perfectly producible reasons for doing so. But the appearance of the place to which the cabman persisted in declaring that he had driven 'Mrs. Mandeville' set the character and proceedings of that mysterious lady before Pedgift Junior in a new light. His personal interest in the inquiry suddenly strengthened, and he began to feel a curiosity to know the real nature of Allan's business which he had not felt yet.

'Our next move, Mr. Armadale, is not a very easy move to see,' he said, as they drove back to the hotel. 'Do you think you could put me in possession of any further particulars?'

Allan hesitated; and Pedgift Junior saw that he had advanced a little too far. 'I mustn't force it,' he thought; 'I must give it time, and let it come of its own accord.' 'In the absence of any other information, sir,' he resumed, 'what do you say to my making some inquiry about that queer shop, and about those two names on the door-plate? My business in London, when I leave you, is of a professional nature; and I am going into the right quarter for getting information, if it is to be got.'

'There can't be any harm, I suppose, in making inquiries,' replied Allan.

He, too, spoke more seriously than usual; he, too, was beginning to feel an all-mastering curiosity to know more. Some vague connection, not to be distinctly realized or traced out, began to establish itself in his mind between the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt's family circumstances and the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt's reference. 'I'll get down and walk, and leave you to go on to your business,' he said. 'I want to consider a little about this, and a walk and a cigar will help me.'

'My business will be done, sir, between one and two,' said Pedgift, when the cab had been stopped, and Allan had got out. 'Shall we meet again at two o'clock, at the hotel?'

Allan nodded, and the cab drove off.