Aware that in a great city neighbours might live beside each other for years without ever meeting, he did not hope for much result, and at the first two houses at which he called he did not get any. But at the third he had an unexpected stroke of luck. The maid who opened the door seemed to know something about the Vane household. But she was suspicious, and on French’s putting his usual questions, showed evident unwillingness to give away information. Keeping any suggestion of eagerness out of his manner, French went on conversationally: “I wanted to see Mrs. Vane about a question of the ownership of a field in the country near Canterbury, where she used to live. I represent Messrs. Hill & Lewesham, the solicitors of Lincoln’s Inn, and we want some information about the boundaries of her father’s place. It’s not exactly important, but it would be worth five shillings to me to get in touch with her, and if you could see your way to help me, you’d have very fairly earned it.” The girl seemed impressed. She glanced back into the hall, came out into the porch, and drawing the door to after her, spoke rather hurriedly. “I don’t know much about it,” she explained, “but I’ll tell you what I can,” and she went on to say that on the previous Friday, that was five days earlier, Mrs. Vane had got a cable that her husband in New York had met with a serious accident and was dying, and for her to go at once. She had packed hurriedly and driven off to catch the boat train for Liverpool, closing the house. As to Mr. Vane himself, the girl knew nothing. She seemed to consider him a negligible part of the establishment. He was but seldom at home, and even then was rarely to be seen. French asked her how it came that she knew so much about the family, and she explained that she and Mrs. Vane’s housemaid had become acquainted over her young gentleman’s model aeroplane, which had flown over the dividing wall into the grounds of Crewe Lodge, and which had been ignominiously handed back by the girl in question. As a result of the incident an acquaintance had grown up between the two, in the course of which much information as to their respective employers had been exchanged. On that Friday evening Mrs. Vane’s maid had called the narrator to the wall by means of a certain signal which they had devised, and had hurriedly told her of her mistress’s sudden call to America, and also that the house was being closed and the services of herself and the cook dispensed with. “She’s in a most terrible fluster to catch the boat train,” the girl had said, “and we have to be out before her so that she may lock up the house.” The girl had breathlessly bid her friend good-bye and had vanished.