The Complete Works of Arthur Morrison (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison

I must earnestly repeat my advice. Come to an understanding with your husband in a straightforward way as soon as you possibly can. There are plenty of private inquiry offices about where they will watch anybody, and do almost anything, without any inquiry into their clients’ motives, and with a single eye to fees. I charge you no fee, and advise you to treat your husband with frankness.”

      Mrs. Geldard did not seem particularly satisfied, though Hewitt’s rejection of a consultation fee somewhat softened her. She left protesting that Hewitt didn’t know the sort of man she had to deal with, and that, one way or another, she must have an explanation.

      “Come, we’ll get to lunch,” said Hewitt. “I’m afraid my suggestion as to Mr. Geldard’s probable occupation in his office wasn’t very brilliant, but it was the pleasantest I could think of for the moment, and the main thing was to pacify the lady. One does no good by aggravating a misunderstanding of that sort.”

      “Can you make any conjecture,” I said, “at what the trouble really is?”

      Hewitt raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “There’s no telling,” he said: “An angry, jealous, pragmatical woman, apparently, this Mrs. Geldard, and it’s impossible to judge at first sight how much she really knows and how much she imagines. I don’t suppose she’ll take my advice. She seems to have worked herself into a state of rancour that must burst out violently somewhere. But lunch is the present business. Come.”

      The next day I spent at a friend’s house a little way out of town, so that it was not till the following morning, about the same Hewitt that I learned from Hewitt that Mrs. Geldard had called again.

      “Yes,” he said; “she seems to have taken my advice in her own way, which wasn’t a judicious one. When I suggested that she should speak frankly to her husband I meant her to do it in a reasonably amicable mood. Instead of that, she appears to have flown at his throat, so to speak, with all the bitterness at her tongue’s disposal. The natural result was a row. The man slanged back, the woman threatened divorce, and the man threatened to leave the country altogether. And so yesterday Mrs. Geldard was here again to get me to follow and watch him. I had to decline once more, and got something rather like a slanging myself for my pains. She seemed to think I was in league with her husband in some way. In the end I promised—more to get rid of her than anything else—to take the case in hand if ever there were anything really tangible to go upon; if her husband really did desert her, you know, or anything like that. If, in fact, there were anything more for me to consider than these spiteful suspicions.”

      “I suppose,” I said, “she had nothing more to tell you than she had before?”

      “Very little. She seems to have startled Geldard, however, by a chance shot. It seems that she once employed a maid, whom she subsequently dismissed, because, as she tells me, the young woman was a great deal too good-looking, and because she observed, or fancied she observed, signs of some secret understanding between her maid and her husband.

      Moreover, it was her husband who discovered this maid and introduced her into the house, and furthermore, he did all he could to induce Mrs. Geldard not to dismiss her. He even hinted that her dismissal might cause serious trouble, and Mrs. Geldard says it is chiefly since this maid has left the house that his movements have become so mysterious. Well it seems that in the heat of yesterday’s quarrel Mrs. Geldard, quite at random, asked tauntingly how many letters Geldard had received from Emma Trennatt lately. Emma Trennatt was the girl’s name. This chance shot seemed to hit the target. Geldard (so his wife tells me at any rate) winced visibly, paled a little, and dodged the question. But for the rest of the quarrel he appeared much less at ease, and made more than one attempt to find out how much his wife really knew of the correspondence she had spoken of. But as her reference to it was of course the wildest possible fluke, he got little guidance, while his better-half waxed savage in her triumph, and they parted on wild cat terms. She came straight here and evidently thought that after Geldard’s reception of her allusion to correspondence with Emma Trennatt—which she seemed to regard as final and conclusive confirmation of all her jealousies—I should take the case in hand at once. When she found me still disinclined she gave me a trifling sample of her rhetoric, as no doubt commonly supplied to Mr. Geldard. She said in effect that she had only come to me because she meant having the best assistance possible, but that she didn’t think much of me after all, and one man was as bad as another, and so on. I think she was a trifle angrier because I remained calm and civil. And she went away this time without the least reference to a consultation fee one way or another.”

      I laughed. “Probably,” I said, “she went off to some agent who’ll watch as long as she likes to pay.”

      “Quite possibly.” But we were quite wrong. Hewitt took his hat and we made for the staircase. As we opened the landing-door there were hurried feet on the stairs below, and as it shut behind Mrs. Geldard’s bonnet-load of pink flowers hove up before us. She was in a state of fierce alarm and excitement that had oddly enough something of triumph in it, as of the woman who says, “I told you so.” Hewitt gave a tragic groan under his breath.

      “Here’s a nice state of things I’m in for now, Mr. Hewitt,” she began abruptly, “through your refusing to do anything for me while there was time, though I was ready to pay you well as I told your young man but no you wouldn’t listen to anything and seemed to think you knew my business better than I could tell you and now you’ve caused this state of affairs by delay perhaps you’ll take the case in hand now?”

      “But you haven’t told me what has happened—” Hewitt began, whereat the lady instantly rejoined, with a shrill pretence of a laugh, “Happened? Why what do you suppose has happened after what I have told you over and over again? My precious husband’s gone clean away, that’s all. He’s deserted me and gone nobody knows where. That’s what’s happened. You said that if he did anything of that sort you’d take the case up; so now I’ve come to see if you’ll keep your promise. Not that it’s likely to be of much use now.”

      We turned back into Hewitt’s private office and Mrs. Geldard told her story. Disentangled from irrelevances, repetitions, opinions and incidental observations, it was this. After the quarrel Geldard had gone to business as usual and had not been seen nor heard of since. After her yesterday’s interview with Hewitt Mrs. Geldard had called at her husband’s office and found it shut as before. She went home again and waited, but he never returned home that evening, nor all night. In the morning she had gone to the office once more, and finding it still shut had told the caretaker that her husband was missing and insisted on his bringing his own key and opening it for her inspection. Nobody was there, and Mrs. Geldard was astonished to find folded and laid on a cupboard shelf the entire suit of clothes that her husband had worn when he left home on the morning of the previous day. She also found in the waste paper basket the fragments of two or three envelopes addressed to her husband, which she brought for Hewitt’s inspection. They were in the handwriting of the girl Trennatt, and with them Mrs. Geldard had discovered a small fragment of one of the letters, a mere scrap, but sufficient to show part of the signature “Emma,” and two or three of a row of crosses running beneath, such as are employed to represent kisses. These things she had brought with her.

      Hewitt examined them slightly and then asked, “Can I have a photograph of your husband, Mrs. Geldard?”

      She immediately produced, not only a photograph of her husband, but also one of the girl Trennatt, which she said belonged to the cook. Hewitt complimented her on her foresight. “And now,” he said, “I think we’ll go and take a look at Mr. Geldard’s office, if we may. Of course I shall follow him up now.” Hewitt made a sign to me, which I interpreted as asking whether I would care to accompany him. I assented with a nod, for the case seemed likely to be interesting.

      I omit most of Mrs. Geldard’s talk by the way, which was almost ceaseless, mostly compounded of useless repetition, and very tiresome.

      The office was on a third floor in a large building in Finsbury Pavement. The caretaker made no difficulty in admitting us. There were