Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/89

 red handkerchief, pirate-fashion. The face beneath it was as remarkable as the unusual headgear—a sharp-featured, dark-hued, much-wrinkled face, with innumerable lines about a pair of thin lips and another pair of blear, watchful eyes, black as sloes and curiously lambent. A strange woman this, thought the detective; probably as odd in character as in appearance: he watched her still more narrowly as she came towards him along the stone-flagged hall. And he saw that she was watching him as observantly as he was watching her, and that watchfulness, mingled largely with suspicion, was as a second nature to her.

"What is it?" she asked in a hard, emotionless tone. "What might you be wanting? If it's anything about the colliery"

"No, no, ma'am!" broke in Wedgwood hurriedly. "Sorry to give you so much trouble! I was just walking this way, on pleasure, and I thought I'd like to make a drawing of this fine, old house—I'm a bit of an artist, you see," he went on with a laugh, as he drew his sketchbook from his pocket and opened it at a page on which was a nearly-completed sketch. "Not often one comes across such a house as this, you know!"

The woman made no immediate reply; she