Naturally, therefore, she was well acquainted with the new development at Tower Cottage, although the isolated position of that dwelling made thorough observation piquantly difficult. She laid her information before an attentive, if not very respectful, audience gathered round the tea-table at Old Place, the Naylors’ handsome house on the outskirts of Sprotsfield and on the far side of the heath from Inkston. She was enjoying herself, although she was, as usual, a trifle distrustful of the quality of Mr. Naylor’s smile; it smacked of the satiric. “He looks at you as if you were a specimen,” she had once been heard to complain; and, when she said       “specimen,” it was obviously beetles that she had in mind.     

       “Everybody knows old Mr. Saffron—by sight, I mean—and the woman who does for him,” she said. “There’s never been anything remarkable about them. He took his walk as regular as clockwork every afternoon, and she bought just the same things every week; her books must have tallied almost to a penny every month, Mrs. Naylor! I know it! And it was a very rare thing indeed for Mr. Saffron to go to London—though I have known him to be away once or twice. But very, very rarely!” She paused and added dramatically, “Until the       armistice!”     

       “Full of ramifications, that event, Miss Wall. It affects even my business.” Mr. Naylor, though now withdrawn from an active share in its conduct, was still interested in the large shipping firm from which he had drawn his comfortable fortune.     

       She looked at him suspiciously, as he put the ends of the slender white fingers of his two hands together, and leant forward to listen with that smile of his and eyes faintly twinkling. But the problem was seething in her brain; she had to go on.     

       “A week after the armistice Mr. Saffron went to London by the 9.50. He traveled first, Anna.”     

       “Did he, dear?” Mrs. Naylor, a stout and placid dame, was not yet stirred to excitement.     

       “He came down by the 4.11, and those two men with him. And they’ve been there ever since!”     

       “Two men, Delia! I’ve only seen one.”     

       “Oh yes, there’s another! Sergeant Hooper they call him; a short thickset man with a black mustache. He buys two 

 Prev. P 9/136 next