The Lost House | Page 7

such an
adventure. It was narrow, mean- looking, the stucco house-fronts,
soot-stained, cracked, and uncared-for, the steps broken and unwashed.
As he entered it a cold rain was falling, and a yellow fog that rolled
between the houses added to its dreariness. It was now late in the
afternoon, and so overcast the sky that in many rooms the gas was lit
and the curtains drawn.
The girl, apparently from observing the daily progress of the sun, had
written she was on the west side of the street and, she believed, in an
upper story. The man who picked up the note had said he had found it
opposite the houses in the middle of the block. Accordingly, Ford
proceeded on the supposition that the entire east side of the street, the
lower stories of the west side, and the houses at each end were
eliminated. The three houses in the centre of the row were outwardly
alike. They were of four stories. Each was the residence of a physician,
and in each, in the upper stories, the blinds were drawn. From the front
there was nothing to be learned, and in the hope that the rear might
furnish some clew, Ford hastened to Wimpole Street, in which the
houses to the east backed upon those to the west in Sowell Street.
These houses were given over to furnished lodgings, and under the
pretext of renting chambers, it was easy for Ford to enter them, and
from the apartments in the rear to obtain several hasty glimpses of the
backs of the three houses in Sowell Street. But neither from this
view-point did he gather any fact of interest. In one of the three houses
in Sowell Street iron bars were fastened across the windows of the
fourth floor, but in private sanatoriums this was neither unusual nor
suspicious. The bars might cover the windows of a nursery to prevent
children from falling out, or the room of some timid householder with a
lively fear of burglars.
In a quarter of an hour Ford was again back in Sowell Street no wiser
than when he had entered it. From the outside, at least, the three houses
under suspicion gave no sign. In the problem before him there was one
point that Ford found difficult to explain. It was the only one that

caused him to question if the letter was genuine. What puzzled him was
this: Why, if the girl were free to throw two notes from the window, did
she not throw them out by the dozen? If she were able to reach a
window, opening on the street, why did she not call for help? Why did
she not, by hurling out every small article the room contained, by
screams, by breaking the window-panes, attract a crowd, and, through
it, the police? That she had not done so seemed to show that only at
rare intervals was she free from restraint, or at liberty to enter the front
room that opened on the street. Would it be equally difficult, Ford
asked himself, for one in the street to communicate with her? What
signal could he give that would draw an answering signal from the girl?
Standing at the corner, hidden by the pillars of a portico, the water
dripping from his rain-coat, Ford gazed long and anxiously at the blank
windows of the three houses. Like blind eyes staring into his, they told
no tales, betrayed no secret. Around him the commonplace life of the
neighborhood proceeded undisturbed. Somewhere concealed in the
single row of houses a girl was imprisoned, her life threatened; perhaps
even at that moment she was facing her death. While, on either side,
shut from her by the thickness only of a brick wall, people were talking,
reading, making tea, preparing the evening meal, or, in the street below,
hurrying by, intent on trivial errands. Hansom cabs, prowling in search
of a fare, passed through the street where a woman was being robbed of
a fortune, the drivers occupied only with thoughts of a possible shilling;
a housemaid with a jug in her hand and a shawl over her bare head,
hastened to the near-by public- house; the postman made his rounds,
and delivered comic postal-cards; a policeman, shedding water from his
shining cape, halted, gazed severely at the sky, and, unconscious of the
crime that was going forward within the sound of his own footsteps,
continued stolidly into Wimpole Street.
A hundred plans raced through Ford's brain; he would arouse the street
with a false alarm of fire and lead the firemen, with the tale of a
smoking chimney, to one of the three houses; he would feign illness,
and, taking refuge in one of them, at night would explore the premises;
he would