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Updated: May 1, 2025
John Maltwood, a bachelor, whom Idsworth believed to be in business in London, and who came there at intervals for fresh air and rest. His visits were not very frequent.
He lived mostly abroad in order to avoid the penalty which all the famous must pay, travelling constantly and known mostly by his assumed name of Maltwood. And behind all this some mystery lay. He was essentially a man of secrets.
To him the minds of most men and women he met were as an open book. To a marvellous degree had he cultivated his power of reading the inner working of the mind by the expression in the eyes and on the faces of even those hard-headed diplomats and men of business whom, in his second character of Mr. Maltwood, he so frequently met.
Maltwood, he pursued a strange profession, one which was fraught with more romance and excitement than any other calling a man could adopt. In comparison with his life that of a detective was really a tame one; while such success had he obtained that in a certain important official circle in London he was held in highest esteem and frequently called into consultation.
At noon on the day following the dinner at Hill Street, Walter Fetherston known at Idsworth as Mr. Maltwood alighted from the station fly, and was met at the cottage gate by the smiling, pleasant-faced woman in a clean apron who acted as caretaker.
Walter Fetherston, the quiet, reticent novelist, was entirely different from the gay, devil-may-care Maltwood, the accomplished linguist, thorough-going cosmopolitan and constant traveller, the easy-going man of means known in society in every European capital. Because of this his few friends who were aware of his dual personality were puzzled.
Though Walter and Enid live in idyllic happiness in a charming old ivy-grown manor house in Sussex, with level lawns and shady rose arbours, they still retain that old cottage at Idsworth, where a plausible excuse has been given to the country folk for "Mr. Maltwood" having been compelled to change his name. No pair in the whole of England are happier to-day.
Maltwood," and made some scribbled replies until Mrs. Deacon entered to announce that his luncheon was ready. When he went back to the quaint, old-fashioned dining-room and seated himself, he said: "I'm going back by the five-eighteen, and I dare say I shan't return for quite a month or perhaps six weeks. Here's a cheque for ten pounds to pay these little bills."
Sometimes he would be absent for many months, and at others he would remain there for weeks at a time, with a cheery word always for the labourers on their way home from work, and always with his hand in his pocket in the cause of charity. John Maltwood, the quiet, youngish-looking man in the gold pince-nez, was popular everywhere over the country-side.
His curious hatred of his own popularity was to everyone a mystery. His intimate friends, of whom Fred Tredennick was one, had whispered that, in order to efface his identity, he was known in certain circles abroad by the name of Maltwood. This was quite true. In London he was a member of White's and the Devonshire as Fetherston.
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