"I think so. I am sure they said 'he' and 'him.' Perhaps Mrs. Grey's husband has arrived. Whoever it is he must be very ill, for I heard papa say the case must be 'grave,' and the doctor called it 'dangerous.' They have gone on together now to see poor Hannah Whittle." Not since he had had the affair in hand had the detective's ears been regaled with so palatable a dish. That Philip Salter had been taken ill with some malady or another sufficiently serious to necessitate the summoning of a doctor, he fully believed. Miss Jemima resumed. "I must say, considering that papa is the medical attendant there, Mrs. Grey might have had the good manners to consult him first." "It may be the old gardener that's ill," observed the detective slowly, who had been turning his thoughts about. "So it may," acquiesced Miss Jemima. "He's but a poor, creaky old thing by all accounts. But no--they would hardly go to the expense of telegraphing for a physician for him with papa at hand." "Oh, they telegraphed, did they?" "So the groom said." "The girl is right," thought the detective. "They'd not telegraph for Hopley. It is Salter. And they have called in a stranger from a distance in preference to Mr. Moore close by. The latter might have talked to the neighbourhood. You have done me a wonderful service, young lady, if you did but know it." Mr. Strange did not offer to attend her home, but suffered her to depart alone. Miss Jemima, who was rather fond of a little general flirtation, though she did perhaps favour one swain above all others, resented the slight in her heart. She consoled herself after the manner of the fox when he could not reach the grapes. "He's nothing but a bear," said she, tossing her little vain head as she tripped away in the deepening gloom of the evening. "It is all for the best. We might have chanced to meet Mr. Cattacomb, and then he would have looked daggers at me. Or--my goodness me!--perhaps Aunt Diana." Mr. Strange strolled on, revolving the aspect of affairs in his official mind. His next object must be to get to speak to Dr. Cavendish and learn who it really was that he had been to see. Of course it was not absolutely beyond the cards of possibility that the sick man was Hopley. It was not impossible that Mrs. Grey might have some private and personal objection to the calling in again of Mr. Moore; or that the old man had been seized with some illness so alarming as to necessitate the services of a clever physician in preference to those of a general practitioner. He did not think any of this likely, but it _might_ be; and only Dr. Cavendish could set it at rest.