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By now a little calmer, he felt assured that this was really Number 9, Frognall Street, and a little happier about it all, though not even momentarily forgetful of the potential police and night-watchman.
To the contrary he disregarded it resolutely; mad, impertinent, justified of his unnamed apprehensions, or simply addled, he held on his way. He turned up Frognall Street with the manner of one out for a leisurely evening stroll.
Unhappily we were wholly in the dark as to what the title of that book was, and, although we ransacked the British Museum and even appealed to the learned Frognall Dibdin, we could not get a clew to the identity of the volume. So we were glad of this excuse for abandoning the practice.
''Ow can I? sez I. ''Ere'm I hout of a job these six months, lookin' fer work every dye an' carn't find it. Sezee, 'Come an' see me this hevenin' at me home, Noine, Frognall Stryte, 'e sez, an' " "That'll do for now. You borrow a pencil and paper and write it down and I'll read it when I've got more time; I never heard the like of it. This 'ouse hasn't been lived in these two years.
She seemed to realize his meaning with surprise, as one, whose thoughts have strayed afar, recalled to an imperative world. "Oh, did I forget? Tell him please to drive to Number Nine, Frognall Street, Bloomsbury." Kirkwood poked his cane through the trap, repeating the address.
"A year ago he died, leaving me everything, the town house in Frognall Street, his estate in Cornwall: everything was willed to me on condition that I must never live with my father, nor in any way contribute to his support. If I disobeyed, the entire estate without reserve was to go to his nearest of kin.... Colonel Burgoyne was unmarried and had no children."
And so, wandering foot-loose in a wilderness of ways, turning aimlessly, now right, now left, he found himself in a street he knew, yet seemed not to know: a silent, black street one brief block in length, walled with dead and lightless dwellings, haunted by his errant memory; a street whose atmosphere was heavy with impalpable essence of desuetude; in two words, Frognall Street.
She choked on a little, dry sob. It was some time before she seemed able to continue. "I was told that my great-uncle's collection of jewels had been my mother's property. He had in life a passion for collecting jewels, and it had been his whim to carry them with him, wherever he went. When he died in Frognall Street, they were in the safe by the head of his bed.
"Strangely enough, he had not been gone ten minutes when my son came in from a conference with our solicitors, informing me that at last a memorandum had turned up, indicating that the heirlooms would be found in a safe secreted behind a dresser in Colonel Burgoyne's bedroom." "At Number 9, Frognall Street."
He was guilty of but one evasion; on one point only did he slur the truth: he conceived it his honorable duty to keep the girl in ignorance of his straitened circumstances; she was not to be distressed by knowledge of his distress, nor could he tolerate the suggestion of seeming to play for her sympathy. It was necessary, then, to invent a motive to excuse his return to 9, Frognall Street.
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