Mrs. Jinks\'s new lodger, Mr. Strange, was making himself at home, not only at Mrs. Jinks\'s, but in the village generally, and gradually getting familiar with its stories and its politics. Talking with the men at the station one hour, chatting to the field labourers the next; stepping into the shops to buy tobacco, or paper, or lozenges, or what not, and staying a good twenty minutes before he came out again: Mr. Strange was ingratiating himself with the local world.

But, though he gossiped freely enough without doors and with Mrs. Jinks within, he did not appear anxious to cultivate intimacy with the social sphere; but rather avoided it. The Rev. Mr. Cattacomb, relying on the information that the new lodger was a gentleman reading for Oxford, had taken the initiative and made an advance to acquaintanceship. Mr. Strange, while receiving it with perfect civility, intimated that he was obliged to decline it. His health; he said, left him no alternative, and he had come to the country for entire quiet. As to his reading for Oxford, it was a mistake he hinted. He was reading; but not with a view of going to any college. After that, the gentlemen bowed when they chanced to meet in the passages or out of doors, exchanged perhaps a remark on the fine weather; and there it ended.

The reader has not failed to detect that this "Mr. Strange," the name caught up so erroneously by Mrs. Jinks, was in reality the shrewd detective officer sent down by Scotland Yard in search of Philip Salter. His instructions were, not to hurry matters to an abrupt conclusion and so miss his game, but to track out Salter patiently and prudently. A case on which he had been recently engaged had been hurried and lost. Circumstances connected with it had caused him to lose sight of his usual prudence: he thought he was justified in doing what he did, and acted for the best: but the result proved him to have been wrong. No fear, with this failure on his mind, and the caution of his masters in his ears, that he would be in over much hurry now. In point of fact he could not if he would, for there was nothing to make hurry over.

For some time not a trace of any kind could Mr. Strange find of Philip Salter. People with whom he gossipped talked to him without any reserve; he was sure of that; and he would artfully lead the conversation and twist it the way he pleased; but he could hear nothing of any one likely to be Salter. The man might as well never have been within a hundred miles of Foxwood; for the matter of that, he might as well never have had existence, for all the trace there was left of him. Scotland Yard, however, was sure that Salter was to be found not far off, and that was enough: Mr. Strange, individually, felt sure of it also.

Knowing what he had been told of the visits of Sir Karl Andinnian to Detective Burtenshaw, and their object, Mr. Strange\'s attention was especially directed to Foxwood Court. Before he had been three days in the place, he had won the heart of Giles the footman (much at liberty just then, through the temporary absence of his master and mistress) and treated him to five glasses of best ale at different times in different public-houses. Giles, knowing no reason for reticence, freely described all he knew about Foxwood Court: the number of inmates, their names, their duties, their persons, and all the rest of it. Not the least idea penetrated his brain that the gentleman had any motive for listening to the details, save the whiling away of some of the day\'s idle hours. There was certainty no one at the Court that could be at all identified with the missing man; and, so far, Mr. Strange had lost his time and his ale money. Of course he put questions as to Sir Karl\'s movements--where he went to in the day, what calls he made, and what he did. But Giles could give no information that was available. Happily, he was ignorant of his master\'s visits to the Maze.

In short--from what Mr. Strange could gather from Giles and others, there was no one whatever in or about Foxwood, then or in time past, that at all answered to Philip Salter. He heard Mr. Smith spoken of--"Smith the agent, an old friend of the Andinnian family"--but it did not once occur to him to attempt to identify him with the criminal. Smith the agent (whom by the way Mr. Strange had not chanced yet to see) was living openly in the place, going about amid the tenants on the estate, appearing at church, altogether transacting his business and pursuing his course without concealment: that is not how Salter would have dared to live, and the detective did not give Smith a suspicious thought. No: wherever Salter might be he was evidently in strict concealment: and it must be Mr. Strange\'s business to hunt him out of it.

In the meantime, no speculation whatever had been aroused in the village as to Mr. Strange himself. He had taken care to account for his stay there at the first onset, and people\'s minds were at rest. The gentleman in delicate health was free to come and go; his appearance in the street, or roads, or fields, excited no more conjecture or observation than did that of the oldest inhabitant. The Reverend Mr. Cattacomb was stared at whenever he appeared, in consequence of the proceedings of St. Jerome\'s: Mr. Strange passed along in peace.

Still, he learnt nothing. Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian had returned home long and long ago; he often saw them out (though he took care they should not see him), together or separately as might be, Sir Karl sometimes driving her in a beautiful little pony-chaise: but he could learn no trace of the man he was sent after. Sir Karl heard that some young student was in the village, out of health and reading for Oxford; he somehow caught up the notion that it was only a lad, and as he never chanced to see him, thought no more of him. And whether Mr. Strange might not have thrown up the game in a short time for utter lack of scent, cannot be told. A clue--or what he thought was a clue--arose at last.

It arose, too, out of a slight misfortune that happened to himself. Entering the house one evening at dusk before the passage lamp was lighted, he chanced to put his foot into a tray of wine-glasses, that the young maid had incautiously placed on the floor outside the parlour-door. In trying to start back and save the glasses, Mr. Strange slipped, went down with his right hand upon the tray, broke a glass or two, and cut his hand in three or four places. Miss Blake was there at the time, helping to catechise some young children: she felt really sorry for the mishap, and kindly went upstairs to the drawing-room to see its extent. The hand was in a bowl of warm water, and Mrs. Jinks was searching for linen to bind it up.

"Why do you put it into warm water, Mr. Strange?" she asked. "It will make it bleed all the more."

"Some bits of glass may have got in," he replied.

"Will you have Mr. Moore?"

But he laughed at the notion of sending for a doctor to cut fingers, and he bound up the hand himself, saying it would be all right. The next day, in the afternoon, Miss Blake made her appearance in his room to inquire how the damage was progressing, and found Mrs. Jinks in the act of assisting him to dress it with some precious ointment that she vowed was better than gold, and would not fail to heal the cuts in a day or two.

Miss Blake had previously a speaking acquaintanceship with Mr. Strange, having often met him going in and out. She sat down; and the three were chatting amicably when they were pounced in upon by little Mrs. Chaffen. Happening to call in to see her cousin, and hearing from the maid downstairs what Mrs. Jinks was then engaged upon--dressing the gentleman\'s hand--the nurse ran up to offer her more experienced services.

She took the hand out of Mrs. Jinks\'s into her own, and dressed it and bound it up as well as Mr. Moore himself could have done. It was nearly over when, by a curious coincidence--curious, considering what was to come of it--the conversation turned upon ghosts. Upon ghosts, of all things in the world! Some noise had been heard in the house the previous night by all the inmates--which noise had not been in any way accounted for. It was like the falling down of a piece of heavy furniture. It had awoke Mr. Cattacomb; it had awoke Mrs. Jinks; it had startled Mr. Strange, who was not asleep. The history of this was being given to Miss Blake, Mr. Strange gravely asserting it could have been nothing but a ghost--and that set Mrs. Chaffen on. She proceeded to tell them with real gravity, not assumed, that she did believe a ghost, in the shape of a gentleman in dinner dress, haunted the Maze: or else that her eyes were taking to see visions.

It should be mentioned that after a week\'s attendance on Mrs. Grey, Nurse Chaffen had been discharged. The patient was then going on quite well: and, as Mr. Moore saw that it worried her to have the nurse there--for whom she seemed to have conceived an insurmountable dislike--he took her away. The summary dismissal did not please the nurse: and she revenged herself by reporting that the Maze had a ghost in it. As a rule, people laughed at her, and thought no more about it: this afternoon her tale was to bear different fruit.

She told it consecutively. How she had been quite flurried by being called out by Dr. Moore all on a sudden; how he had taken her straight off to the Maze without saying where it was she was going till she got to the gate; how she and the doctor had seen the gentleman at the top of the stairs (which she took it to be the sick lady\'s husband), and watched him vanish into an end room, and had never seen the least sign of him afterwards; how the servant, Mrs. Hopley, had vowed through thick and thin that no gentleman was, or had been, or could have been in the house, unbeknown to her and Hopley.

Nurse Chaffen talked away to her heart\'s content, enlarging upon points of her story. Not one of them interrupted her: not one but would have listened with interest had she run on until midnight. Mrs. Jinks from her love of marvellous tales; the detective because he believed this might be the clue he wanted to Philip Salter; and Miss Blake in her resentful condemnation of Sir Karl Andinnian. For, that the "gentleman in dinner dress" was no other than Sir Karl, who had stolen in on one of his secret visits, she could have staked her life upon.

"A tall gentleman with dark hair, you say it looked like?" questioned Mr. Strange indifferently.

"Tall for certain, sir. As to his hair, I don\'t know; it might have been darkish. I see he had nice white teeth."

"Salter had good teeth," was the mental comment of the detective. "I have found him."

"And in dinner dress?" added Miss Blake with a cough.

"So it looked like, ma\'am. The sort of coat that gentlefolks wears in an evening."

"And you mean to say you never see him after; never but that there one time?" tartly interposed the Widow Jinks.

"Never at all. The rooms was all open to daylight while I was there, but he wasn\'t in never a one of \'em."

"Then I tell you what, Betsey Chaffen; it was a ghost, and you need not hesitate to stand to it."

"Well, you see he didn\'t look like a ghost, but like an ordinary gentleman," confessed Mrs. Chaffen. "What came over me, and what I can\'t make out, was Ann Hopley\'s standing it out that neither ghost nor gentleman was there: she said she\'d take her oath to it."

"Thank you, you\'ve done my hand up beautifully, Mrs. Chaffen," said the patient. "I should give my credence to the spirit theory. Did Mr. Moore see the appearance of this ghostly gentleman?"

"Yes he did, sir. I\'m sure he did. For he lifted his head like at the gentleman, and stood still when he got to the top of the stairs, staring at the room he had vanished into. I told him a day or two afterwards that Mrs. Hopley denied that any one had been there, and the doctor quietly said, \'Then we must have been mistaken.\' I did not like to ask whether he thought it was a ghost."

"Oh I think you may depend upon the ghost," returned Mr. Strange, biting his lips to prevent a laugh.

"Well, sir,............