I.

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...