At four o'clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs. Hall was
screwing up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would
take some tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar.
"My sakes! Mrs. Hall," said he, "but this is terrible
weather for thin boots!" The snow outside was falling faster.
Mrs. Hall agreed with him, and then noticed he had his bag and
hit upon a brilliant idea. "Now you're here, Mr. Teddy,"
said she, "I'd be glad if you'd give th' old clock in the
parlour a bit of a look. 'Tis going, and it strikes well and hearty;
but the hour-hand won't do nuthin' but point at six."
And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and
rapped and entered.
Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in the
armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged
head drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red
glow from the fire--which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals,
but left his downcast face in darkness--and the scanty vestiges of
the day that came in through the open door. Everything was ruddy,
shadowy, and indistinct to her, the more so since she had just been
lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second
it seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth
wide open,--a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole of
the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a moment: the
white- bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn
below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair, put up his hand.
She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw
him more clearly, with the muffler held to his face just as she had
seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied, had
tricked her.
"Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the
clock, sir?" she said, recovering from her momentary shock.
"Look at the clock?" he said, staring round in a drowsy
manner and speaking over his hand, and then getting more fully
awake, "certainly."
Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched
himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was
confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, "taken
aback."
"Good-afternoon," said the stranger, regarding him, as
Mr. Henfrey says with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles,
"like a lobster."
"I hope," said Mr. Henfrey, "that it's no
intrusion."
"None whatever," said the stranger. "Though I
understand," he said, turning to Mrs. Hall, "that this
room is really to be mine for my own private use."
"I thought, sir," said Mrs. Hall, "you'd prefer
the clock--" She was going to say "mended."
"Certainly," said the stranger, "certainly--but,
as a rule, I like to be alone and undisturbed.
"But I'm really glad to have the clock seen to," he
said, seeing a certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey's manner.
"Very glad." Mr. Henfrey had intended to apologise and
withdraw, but this anticipation reassured him. The stranger stood
round with his back to the fireplace and put his hands behind his
back. "And presently," he said, "when the
clock-mending is over, I think I should like to have some tea. But
not until the clock-mending is over."
Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room,--she made no
conversational advances this time, because she did not want to be
snubbed in front of Mr. Henfrey,--when her visitor asked her if she
had made any arrangements about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told
him she had mentioned the matter to the postman, and that the
carrier could bring them over on the morrow. "You are certain
that is the earliest?" he said.
She was certain, with a marked coldness.
"I should explain," he added, "what I was really
too cold and fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental
investigator."
"Indeed, sir," said Mrs. Hall, much impressed.
"And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances."
"Very useful things indeed they are, sir," said Mrs.
Hall.
"And I'm naturally anxious to get on with my
inquiries."
"Of course, sir."
"My reason for coming to Iping," he proceeded, with a
certain deliberation of manner, "was--a desire for solitude. I
do not wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an
accident--"
"I thought as much," said Mrs. Hall to herself.
"--necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes--are sometimes
so weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for
hours together. Lock myself up. Sometimes--now and then. Not at
present, certainly. At such times the slightest disturbance, the
entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of excruciating
annoyance to me--it is well these things should be understood."
"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Hall. "And if I might
make so bold as to ask--"
"That, I think, is all," said the stranger, with that
quietly irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs.
Hall reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion.
After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained standing in front
of the fire, glaring, so Mr. Henfrey puts it, at the clock- mending.
Mr. Henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face,
but extracted the works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet
and unassuming a manner as possible. He worked with the lamp close
to him, and the green shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands,
and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest of the room
shadowy. When he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes. Being
constitutionally of a curious nature, he had removed the works--a
quite unnecessary proceeding--with the idea of delaying his
departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger.
But the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. So still,
it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the room and looked up,
and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses
staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of
them. It was so uncanny-looking to Henfrey that for a minute they
remained staring blankly at one another. Then Henfrey looked down
again. Very uncomfortable position! One would like to say something.
Should he remark that the weather was very cold for the time of
year?
He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot.
"The weather--" he began.
"Why don't you finish and go?" said the rigid figure,
evidently in a state of painfully suppressed rage. "All you've
got to do is to fix the hour-hand on its axle. You're simply
humbugging--"
"Certainly, sir--one minute more, sir. I overlooked--"
And Mr. Henfrey finished and went.
But he went off feeling excessively annoyed. "Damn it!"
said Mr. Henfrey to himself, trudging down the village through the
thawing snow; "a man must do a clock at times, sure-lie."
And again: "Can't a man look at you?--Ugly!"
And yet again: "Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you
you couldn't be more wropped and bandaged."
At Gleeson's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the
stranger's hostess at the Coach and Horses, and who now drove the
Iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to
Sidderbridge Junction, coming towards him on his return from that
place. Hall had evidently been "stopping a bit" at
Sidderbridge, to judge by his driving. "'Ow do, Teddy?" he
said, passing.
"You got a rum un up home!" said Teddy.
Hall very sociably pulled up. "What's that?" he asked.
"Rum-looking customer stopping at the Coach and
Horses," said Teddy. "My sakes!"
And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his
grotesque guest. "Looks a bit like a disguise, don't it? I'd
like to see a man's face if I had him stopping in my place,"
said Henfrey. "But women are that trustful,--where strangers
are concerned. He's took your rooms and he ain't even given a name,
Hall."
"You don't say so!" said Hall, who was a man of
sluggish apprehension.
"Yes," said Teddy. "By the week. Whatever he is,
you can't get rid of him under the week. And he's got a lot of
luggage coming to-morrow, so he says. Let's hope it won't be stones
in boxes, Hall."
He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a
stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely
suspicious. "Get up, old girl," said Hall. "I s'pose
I must see 'bout this."
Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.
Instead of "seeing 'bout it," however, Hall on his
return was severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had
spent in Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered
snappishly and in a manner not to the point. But the seed of
suspicion Teddy had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall in spite
of these discouragements. "You wim' don't know
everything," said Mr. Hall, resolved to ascertain more about
the personality of his guest at the earliest possible opportunity.
And after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did about half-past
nine, Mr. Hall went aggressively into the parlour and looked very
hard at his wife's furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't
master there, and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a
sheet of mathematical computation the stranger had left. When
retiring for the night he instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely
at the stranger's luggage when it came next day.
"You mind your own business, Hall," said Mrs. Hall,
"and I'll mind mine."
She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the
stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and
she was by no means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle
of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips,
that came trailing after her at the end of interminable necks, and
with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her
terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.
