ray.
Good-morning." The doctor withdrew as noiselessly as he had appeared;
the man in the shabby livery silently opened the door; and Allan and his
companion found themselves in the street again.

"Mr. Armadale," said Pedgift, "I don't know how you feel; I feel
puzzled."

"That's awkward," returned Allan. "I was just going to ask you what we
ought to do next."

"I don't like the look of the place, the look of the shop-woman, or the
look of the doctor," pursued the other. "And yet I can't say I think
they are deceiving us; I can't say I think they really know Mrs.
Mandeville's name."

The impressions of Pedgift Junior seldom misled him; and they had not
misled him in this case. The caution which had dictated Mrs. Oldershaw's
private removal from Bayswater was the caution which frequently
overreaches itself. It had warned her to trust nobody at Pimlico with
the secret of the name she had assumed as Miss Gwilt's reference; but
it had entirely failed to prepare her for the emergency that had really
happened. In a word, Mrs. Oldershaw had provided for everything except
for the one unimaginable contingency of an after-inquiry into the
character of Miss Gwilt.

"We must do something," said Allan; "it seems useless to stop here."

Nobody had ever yet caught Pedgift Junior at the end of his resources;
and Allan failed to catch him at the end of them now. "I quite agree
with you, sir," he said; "we must do something. We'll cross-examine the
cabman."

The cabman proved to be immovable. Charged with mistaking the place, he
pointed to the empty shop window. "I don't know what you may have seen,
gentlemen," he remarked; "but there's the only shop window I ever saw
with nothing at all inside it. _That_ fixed the place in my mind at the
time, and I know it again when I see it." Charged with mistaking the
person or the day, or the house at which he had taken the person up, the
cabman proved to be still unassailable. The servant who fetched him
was marked as a girl well known on the stand. The day was marked as the
unluckiest working-day he had had since the first of the year; and the
lady was marked as having had her money ready at the right moment (which
not one elderly lady in a hundred usually had), and having paid him his
fare on demand without disputing it (which not one elderly lady in a
hundred usually did). "Take my number, gentlemen," concluded the cabman,
"and pay me for my time; and what I've said to you, I'll swear