Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/95

 girl. "He's in the sugar-broking in Mincing Lane"

Before Wedgwood could reply that he hadn't the pleasure of Mr. Thomas Patello's acquaintance, a latticed window was opened in the front of the house, and the red and yellow handkerchiefed head of Janet Clagne thrust itself out.

"Mattie!" cried the housekeeper. "Come here—come at once—what're you doing, idling there, and all those fowls waiting to be fed?"

The girl made a grimace and hurried off; the red and yellow disappeared from the window. During the rest of the time that Wedgwood took to finish his sketch he saw no more of Mattie Patello, nor of young Mortover. But as he went away, glancing back at the house, he espied Janet Clagne watching him from a side-door; she was still watching when he turned the corner towards Netherwell. The detective was full of thought, surmise, speculation, tangled theories as he went back to the town. His prospecting of Mortover Grange had not been fruitless; he had learned things; he had seen young Philip Mortover: he had discovered his weird housekeeper. And from the lips of the artless Mattie Patello he had learned that Janet Clagne wanted to marry her pennliness niece to her master, who was now likely to be a very wealthy man; he had learned, too, that