"Wait, Mr. Perkwite!" counselled Millwaters. "Our governor is a pretty cute and smart sort, and he's vastly interested in this Miss Wickham; so Portlethwaite and he'll be on their way down here now, hot foot; and with help, too, if he thinks she's in any danger. Now, _he_ can go straight to that door and demand to see her, and--"
"Why can't we?" interrupted Perkwite. "I'd do it! Lord, man, she may be in real peril--"
"Not while Viner's in there," said Millwaters quietly. "I might possibly have gone and rung the bell myself, but for that. But Viner's in there--wait!"
And Perkwite waited, chafing, at the corner of the dismal street, until a quarter of an hour had passed. Then a car came hurrying along and pulled up as Millwaters and his companion were reached, and from it sprang Mr. Carless, Lord Ellingham and two men in plain-clothes, at the sight of whom Perkwite heaved a huge sigh of intense relief.
Viner was so sure that the sound which he had heard on Mrs. Killenhall's retirement was that caused by the turning of a key or slipping of a lock in the door by which he had entered, that before speaking to Miss Wickham he instantly stepped back and tried it. To his astonishment it opened readily, but the anteroom outside was empty; Mrs. Killenhall had evidently walked straight through it and disappeared.
"That's odd!" he said, turning to Miss Wickham. "I distinctly thought I heard something like the snap of a lock, or a bolt or something. Didn't you?"
"I certainly heard a sound of that sort," admitted Miss Wickham. "But--the door's open, isn't it?"
"Yes--that is so," answered Viner, who was distinctly puzzled. "Yet--but then, all this seems very odd. When did you come down here?"
"About an hour ago," replied Miss Wickham, "in a hurry."
"To see a Dr. Martincole, who is to tell us something about Mr. Ashton," replied his fellow-sharer in these strange quarters. "Didn't Mrs. Killenhall ask you to come down for the same purpose, Mr. Viner?"
Viner, before he replied, looked round the room. Considering the extreme shabbiness and squalour of the surrounding district, he was greatly surprised to find that the apartment in which he and Miss Wickham waited was extremely well furnished, if in an old-fashioned and rather heavy way. The walls were panelled in dark, age-stained oak, to the height of several feet; above the panelling were arranged good oil pictures, which Viner would have liked to examine at his leisure; here and there, in cabinets, were many promising curiosities; there were old silver and brass things, and a shelf or two of well-bound books--altogether the place and its effects were certainly not what Viner had expected to find in such a quarter.