David's first impulse was to go straightway after the meal to interview this Sarah Gissing. Then he set his lips, saying to himself: "The day's work," and, after lighting his pipe, he walked up to his literary tools with the grimness of a man about to throttle an enemy. Whereupon he sat down and wrote something. When he came back to earth with a weary but taut brain, Mrs. Grover was gone for the day. It was near seven in the evening, and the prairie-wolf within was growling "Dinner-time."
His mental faculties being now on a tension, he thought to himself that there was no reason why he should not be prompt, and call upon Miss Gissing that evening. Though, after dinner, a mortal lethargy and reaction seized upon him with the whisper, "To-morrow is better than to-day," he proved true to his high-strung self, and went by bus to Baker-St., where he took train for the station nearest the village of Chalfont.
It was a sharp walk from station to village. There was no cab; and when he arrived at the Peacock Inn, where Sarah Gissing was now a barmaid, he learned that she was away on leave at a neighboring village. He strolled about the silent street until Sarah came home at ten o'clock, a thin girl, with projecting top teeth, and a chronic stare of wonderment in her eyes.
"You are not to be alarmed," David said to her. "I only came to ask you a few questions about your late mistress, Miss Gwendoline Barnes, in whom I have an interest. No one will be harmed, as far as I am aware, by your telling me all that you know, while you and I may profit by it."
They spoke in the tiny inn drawing-room, and Sarah in her coat, with her hat on, sitting on the piano-stool, stared and answered shortly at first. Little by little she was induced to utter herself.
"He was a tall man," she said, "rather thin, dark and pale--"
"Yes, sir, straight nose; a handsome man."
"Well, but all that says nothing. Many people answer such a description. Was there no photograph of him in the flat? Did you never see a photograph?"
"Yes, there was a photograph on the mantelpiece of Miss Barnes's bed-room. In a silver frame it was; but the day after her death the silver frame was still there, and the photograph was gone, for I noticed it myself."