Adventures of Martin Hewitt (6 page)

Any people have been surprised at the information that, in all Martin
Hewitt’s wide and busy practice, the matrimonial cases whereon he has been
engaged have been comparatively few. That he has had many important cases of
the sort is true, but among the innumerable cases of different descriptions
they make a small percentage. The reason is that so many of the persons
wishing to consult him on such concerns were actuated by mere unreasoning or
fanciful jealousy that Hewitt would do no more in their cases than urge
reconciliation and mutual trust, The common “private inquiry” offices chiefly
flourish on this class of case, and their proprietors present no particular
reluctance to taking it up. In any event it means fees for consultation and
“watching;” and recent newspaper reports have made it plain that among some
of the less scrupulous agents a case may be manufactured from beginning to
end according to order. Again, Hewitt had a distaste for the sort of work
commonly involved in matrimonial troubles; and with the immense amount of
business brought to him, rendering necessary his rejection of so many
commissions, it was easy for him to avoid what went against his inclinations.
Still, as I have said, matrimonial cases there were, and often of an
interesting nature, taking rise in no fanciful nor unreasoning jealousy.

When, on its change of proprietorship, I accepted my appointment on the
paper that now claims me, I had a week or two’s holiday pending the final
turning over of the property. I could not leave town, for I might have been
wanted at any moment, but I made an absorbing and instructive use of my
leisure as an amateur assistant to Hewitt. I sat in his office much of the
time and saw more of the daily routine of his work than I had ever done
before; and I was present at one or two interviews that initiated cases that
afterwards developed striking features. One of these—which indeed I saw
entirely through before I resumed my more legitimate work—was the case
of Mr. and Mrs. Geldard.

Hewitt had stepped out for a few minutes, and I was sitting alone in his
private room when I became conscious of some disturbance in the outer office.
An excited female voice was audible making impatient inquiries. Presently
Kerrett, Hewitt’s clerk, came in with the message that a lady—Mrs.
Geldard, was the name on the visitor’s slip that she had filled up—was
anxious to see Mr. Hewitt, at once, and failing himself had decided to see
me, whom Kerrett had calmly taken it upon himself to describe as Hewitt’s
confidential assistant. He apologised for this, and explained that he
thought, as the lady-seemed excited, it would be as well to let her see me to
begin with, if there was no objection, and perhaps she would begin to be
coherent and intelligible by Hewitt’s arrival, which might occur at any
moment. So the lady was shown in. She was tall, bony, and severe of face, and
she began as soon as she saw me: “I’ve come to get you to get a watch set on
my husband. I’ve endured this sort of thing in silence long enough. I won’t
have it. I’ll see if there’s no protection to be had for a woman treated as I
am—with his goings out all day ‘on business’ when his office is shut up
tight all the time. I wanted to see Mr. Hewitt himself, but I suppose you’ll
do, for the present at any rate, though I’ll have it sifted to the bottom,
and get the best advice to be had, no matter what it costs, though I
am
only a woman with nobody to confide in or to speak a word for me,
and I’m not going to be crushed like a fly, as I’ll soon let him know.”

Here I seized a short opportunity to offer Mrs. Geldard a chair, and to
say that I expected Mr. Hewitt in a few minutes.

“Very well, I’ll wait and see him. But you have to do with the watching
business no doubt, and you’ll understand what it is I want done; and I’m sure
I’m justified, and mean to sift it to the bottom, whatever happens. Am I to
be kept in total ignorance of what my husband does all day when he is
supposed to be at business? Is it likely I should submit to that?”

I said I didn’t think it likely at all, which was a fact. Mrs. Geldard
appeared to be about the least submissive woman I ever saw.

“No, and I won’t, that’s more. Nice goings on somewhere, no doubt, with
his office shut up all day and the business going to ruin. I want you to
watch him. I want you to follow him to-morrow morning and find out all he
does and let me know. I’ve followed him myself this morning and yesterday
morning, but he gets away somehow from the back of his office, and I can’t
watch on two staircases at once, so I want you to come and do it, and
I’ll—”

Here fortunately Hewitt’s arrival checked Mrs. Geldard’s flow of speech,
and I rose and introduced him. I told him shortly that the lady desired a
watch to be set on her husband at his office, and a report to be given her of
his daily proceedings. Hewitt did not appear to accept the commission with
any particular delight, but he sat down to hear his visitor’s story. “Stay
here, Brett,” he said, as he saw my hands stretched towards the door. “We’ve
an engagement presently, you know.”

The engagement, I remembered, was merely to lunch, and Hewitt kept me with
some notion of restricting the time which this alarming woman might be
disposed to occupy. She repeated to Hewitt, in the same manner, what she had
already said to me, and then Hewitt, seizing his first opportunity, said,
“Will you please tell me, Mrs. Geldard, definitely and concisely, what
evidence, or even indication, you have of unbecoming conduct on your
husband’s part, and substantially what case you wish me to take up?”

“Case? why, I’ve been telling you.” And again Mrs. Geldard repeated her
vague catalogue of sufferings, assuring Hewitt that she was determined to
have the best advice and assistance, and that therefore she had come to him.
In the end Hewitt answered: “Put concisely, Mrs. Geldard, I take it that your
case is simply this. Mr. Geldard is in business as, I think you told me, a
general agent and broker, and keeps an office in the city. You have had
various disagreements with him—not an uncommon thing, unfortunately,
between married people—and you have entertained certain indefinite
suspicions of his behaviour. Yesterday you went so far as to go to his office
soon after he should have been there, and found him absent and the office
shut up. You waited some time, and called again, but the door was still
locked, and the caretaker of the building assured you that Mr. Geldard
usually kept his office thus shut. You knocked repeatedly, and called through
the keyhole, but got no answer. This morning you even followed your husband
and saw him enter his office, but when, a little later, you yourself
attempted to enter it you once more found it locked and apparently
tenantless. From this you conclude that he must have left his rooms by some
back way, and you say you are determined to find out where he goes and what
he does during the day. For this purpose you, I gather, wish me to watch him
and report his whole day’s proceedings to you?”

“Yes, of course; as I said.”

“I’m afraid the state of my other engagements just at present will
scarcely admit of that. Indeed, to speak quite frankly, this mere watching,
especially of husband or wife, is not a sort of business that I care to
undertake, except as a necessary part of some definite, tangible case. But
apart from that, will you allow me to advise you? Not professionally, I mean,
but merely as a man of the world. Why come to third parties with these vague
suspicions? Family divisions of this sort, with all sorts of covert mistrust
and suspicion, are bad things at best, and once carried as far as you talk of
carrying this, go beyond peaceable remedy. Why not deal frankly and openly
with your husband? Why not ask him plainly what he has been doing during the
days you were unable to get into his office? You will probably find it all
capable of a very simple and innocent explanation.”

“Am I to understand, then,” Mrs. Geldard said, bridling, “that you refuse
to help me?”

“I have not refused to help you,” Hewitt replied. “On the contrary, I am
trying to help you now. Did your husband ever follow any other profession
than the one he is now engaged in?”

“Once he was a mechanical engineer, but he got very few clients, and it
didn’t pay.”

“There, now, is a suggestion. Would it be very unlikely that your husband,
trained mechanician as he is, may have reverted so far to his old profession
as to be conceiving some new invention? And in that case, what more probable
than that he would lock himself securely in his office to work out his idea,
and take no notice of visitors knocking, in order to admit nobody who might
learn something of what he was doing? Does he keep a clerk or office
boy?”

“No, he never has since he left the mechanical engineering.”

“Well, Mrs. Geldard, I’m sorry I have no more time now, but I must
earnestly repeat my advice. Come to an understanding with your husband in a
straightforward way as soon as you possibly can. There are plenty of private
inquiry offices about where they will watch anybody, and do almost anything,
without any inquiry into their clients’ motives, and with a single eye to
fees. I charge you no fee, and advise you to treat your husband with
frankness.”

Mrs. Geldard did not seem particularly satisfied, though Hewitt’s
rejection of a consultation fee somewhat softened her. She left protesting
that Hewitt didn’t know the sort of man she had to deal with, and that, one
way or another, she must have an explanation.

“Come, we’ll get to lunch,” said Hewitt. “I’m afraid my suggestion as to
Mr. Geldard’s probable occupation in his office wasn’t very brilliant, but it
was the pleasantest I could think of for the moment, and the main thing was
to pacify the lady. One does no good by aggravating a misunderstanding of
that sort.”

“Can you make any conjecture,” I said, “at what the trouble really
is?”

Hewitt raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “There’s no telling,” he
said: “An angry, jealous, pragmatical woman, apparently, this Mrs. Geldard,
and it’s impossible to judge at first sight how much she really knows and how
much she imagines. I don’t suppose she’ll take my advice. She seems to have
worked herself into a state of rancour that must burst out violently
somewhere. But lunch is the present business. Come.”

The next day I spent at a friend’s house a little way out of town, so that
it was not till the following morning, about the same Hewitt that I learned
from Hewitt that Mrs. Geldard had called again.

“Yes,” he said; “she seems to have taken my advice in her own way, which
wasn’t a judicious one. When I suggested that she should speak frankly to her
husband I meant her to do it in a reasonably amicable mood. Instead of that,
she appears to have flown at his throat, so to speak, with all the bitterness
at her tongue’s disposal. The natural result was a row. The man slanged back,
the woman threatened divorce, and the man threatened to leave the country
altogether. And so yesterday Mrs. Geldard was here again to get me to follow
and watch him. I had to decline once more, and got something rather like a
slanging myself for my pains. She seemed to think I was in league with her
husband in some way. In the end I promised—more to get rid of her than
anything else—to take the case in hand if ever there were anything
really tangible to go upon; if her husband really did desert her, you know,
or anything like that. If, in fact, there were anything more for me to
consider than these spiteful suspicions.”

“I suppose,” I said, “she had nothing more to tell you than she had
before?”

“Very little. She seems to have startled Geldard, however, by a chance
shot. It seems that she once employed a maid, whom she subsequently
dismissed, because, as she tells me, the young woman was a great deal too
good-looking, and because she observed, or fancied she observed, signs of
some secret understanding between her maid and her husband.

Moreover, it was her husband who discovered this maid and introduced her
into the house, and furthermore, he did all he could to induce Mrs. Geldard
not to dismiss her. He even hinted that her dismissal might cause serious
trouble, and Mrs. Geldard says it is chiefly since this maid has left the
house that his movements have become so mysterious. Well it seems that in the
heat of yesterday’s quarrel Mrs. Geldard, quite at random, asked tauntingly
how many letters Geldard had received from Emma Trennatt lately. Emma
Trennatt was the girl’s name. This chance shot seemed to hit the target.
Geldard (so his wife tells me at any rate) winced visibly, paled a little,
and dodged the question. But for the rest of the quarrel he appeared much
less at ease, and made more than one attempt to find out how much his wife
really knew of the correspondence she had spoken of. But as her reference to
it was of course the wildest possible fluke, he got little guidance, while
his better-half waxed savage in her triumph, and they parted on wild cat
terms. She came straight here and evidently thought that after Geldard’s
reception of her allusion to correspondence with Emma Trennatt—which
she seemed to regard as final and conclusive confirmation of all her
jealousies—I should take the case in hand at once. When she found me
still disinclined she gave me a trifling sample of her rhetoric, as no doubt
commonly supplied to Mr. Geldard. She said in effect that she had only come
to me because she meant having the best assistance possible, but that she
didn’t think much of me after all, and one man was as bad as another, and so
on. I think she was a trifle angrier because I remained calm and civil. And
she went away this time without the least reference to a consultation fee one
way or another.”