Miss Hartley was one of his oldest and most valued clients. In fact, both repudiated the business term and called each other “friends.” Their sentiments toward each other warranted it. She was an elderly spinster, eccentric and wealthy; he a bachelor who could and did afford himself a whim. They smiled at one another’s oddities without any lessening of the mutual respect many years of intercourse had induced. His attitude toward the old lady was almost fraternal. The long practice of watching her interests had developed a habit of affectionate protection in him. He advised her on countless petty manners and forgot to put them in the bill. He was personally, not merely professionally, anxious on her behalf when the occasion required it.
The sight of the ladder against the wall recalled one of his most common anxieties. It was a pet grievance of his that she would persist in living alone, save for one maid, in that large house. To his mind, she offered herself as a prey to the malefactor who should chance to correlate the two facts of her wealth and her solitude. He expressed that opinion frequently, and was obstinately smiled at. Now, as he walked on, the thought of the danger she invited recurred to him. It irritated him.
“Tut! tut!” he said. “That ladder, now, is just placed right for a burglar! I’m sure it is! Dear me! how careless! how very careless!” He tried to measure the ladder from his remembrance of it, and, to end his doubts, returned and examined it again. The ladder rested close to a freshly painted window-sill on the first floor.
“Dear me! dear me!” said Mr. Todmorden, genuinely perturbed. “That’s the window of Miss Hartley’s room!” He stood irresolute, debating whether he should ring the bell, and point out the dangerous position of the ladder. A nervous fear of the old lady’s smile restrained him. He knew she regarded him as an old “fusser.”
“She is really too foolish, too foolish!” he repeated. “Living alone there--with only that stupid girl in the house! Any one might break in. They’ve only to walk up that ladder! And she will persist in advertising that she has valuables!” The occasion of the final clause in Mr. Todmorden’s mental arraignment was a particularly fine diamond brooch the old lady wore at all times, despite his protests. If there was a sentimental reason for its continual use, she concealed it under her quiet smile. The memory of that smile irritated Mr. Todmorden. “Confound her! she’s so obstinate!” His thoughts focussed themselves on that brooch, with a criminal lurking in the background. Gradually, they drifted to the criminal. As his irritation faded under the soft warm light of the sunset, he amused himself by picturing types of possible burglars. Finally, forgetting his original preoccupation, he thought of an ancestor of his own--his maternal grandfather--who had been transported for a doubtful case of murder. In contrast to that squalid page of family history self-esteem read over his own achievements. Successful, respected, an alderman, a possible knighthood in front, he had surely wiped out that black patch on his pedigree. He savoured a very pleasant sense of personal probity as he walked up the drive to his house.