At four o'clock, when it was quite dark and Mrs. Hall was getting up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would like some tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-repairer, came into the bar. "My goodness! Mrs. Hall," he said, "this is terrible weather for thin boots!" The snow outside was falling faster.
Mrs. Hall agreed with him, and then noticed he had his bag and had a brilliant idea. "Now you're here, Mr. Teddy," she said, "Could you have a look at the old clock in the lounge? It's going, and it works well; but the hour-hand always points at six."
And leading the way, she went across to the lounge door and knocked and entered.
Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was sitting in the armchair in front of the fire, apparently sleeping, with his bandaged head falling to one side. The only light in the room was the red glow from the fire - which lit his eyes like railway signals, but left his face in darkness - and the remains of the day that came in through the open door. Everything was red, shadowy, and indistinct to her, especially since she had just been lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second it seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth wide open, - a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole of the lower part of his face. It was the sensation of a moment: the white-bandaged head, the monstrous eyes, and this huge yawn below it. Then he moved, sat up in his chair, put up his hand. She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw him more clearly, with the scarf held to his face just as she had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she imagined, had tricked her.
"Would you mind, sir, this man coming to look at the clock, sir?" she said, recovering from her momentary shock.
"Look at the clock?" he said, looking round in a sleepy manner and speaking over his hand, and then waking up more, "certainly."
Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he got up and stretched himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, "taken by surprise."
"Good-afternoon," said the stranger, looking at him, as Mr. Henfrey says with a vivid sense of the dark glasses, "like a lobster."
"I hope," said Mr. Henfrey, "that it's no intrusion."
"None whatever," said the stranger. "Though I understand," he said, turning to Mrs. Hall, "that this room is really to be mine for my own private use."
"I thought, sir," said Mrs. Hall, "you'd prefer the clock - " She was going to say "mended."
"Certainly," said the stranger, "certainly - but, as a rule, I like to be alone and undisturbed."
"But I'm really glad to have the clock looked at," he said, seeing that Mr. Henfrey's didn't know what to do. "Very glad." Mr. Henfrey had intended to apologise and leave, but this reassured him. The stranger stood with his back to the fireplace and put his hands behind his back. "And," he said, "when the clock-mending is over, I think I would like to have some tea. But not until the clock-mending is over."
Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room, - she made no attempt at conversation this time, because she did not want to be interrupted in front of Mr. Henfrey, - when her visitor asked her if she had made any arrangements about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had mentioned the matter to the postman, and that they would be brought over the next day. "You are certain that is the earliest?" he said.
She was certain, with a distinct coldness.
"I should explain," he added, "what I was really too cold and tired to do before, that I am an experimental investigator."
"Really, sir," said Mrs. Hall, much impressed.
"And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances."
"Very useful things indeed they are, sir," said Mrs. Hall.
"And I'm naturally anxious to get on with my investigation."
"Of course, sir."
"My reason for coming to Iping," he continued, with a certain deliberation of manner, "was - a desire for solitude. I do not wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an accident - "
"I thought as much," said Mrs. Hall to herself.
" - requires a certain retirement. My eyes - are sometimes so weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for hours. Lock myself up. Sometimes - now and then. Not at present, certainly. At such times the slightest interruption, the entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of extraordinary annoyance to me - it is good these things are understood."
"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Hall. "And if I might ask - "
"That, I think, is all," said the stranger, with that quietly irresistible air of finality he could assume. Mrs. Hall kept her question and sympathy for a better occasion.
After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained standing in front of the fire, watching the clock- mending angrily. Mr. Henfrey not only took the hands off the clock, and the face, but took out the mechanism; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet a manner as possible. He worked with the lamp close to him, and the green lamp-shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands, and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest of the room shadowy. When he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes. Being of a curious nature, he had removed the mechanism - a quite unnecessary procedure - with the idea of postponing his departure and perhaps starting a conversation with the stranger. But the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. So still, it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the room and looked up, and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots floating in front of them. It was so strange-looking to Henfrey that for a minute they remained staring at one another. Then Henfrey looked down again. Very uncomfortable position! One would like to say something. Should he comment that the weather was very cold for the time of year?
He looked up and started. "The weather - " he began.
"Why don't you finish and go?" said the rigid figure, evidently in a state of suppressed fury. "All you've got to do is to put the hour-hand on its axle. You're simply filling in time - "
"Certainly, sir - one minute more, sir. I forgot - " And Mr. Henfrey finished and went.
But he went off feeling extremely annoyed. "Damn it!" said Mr. Henfrey to himself, walking down the village through the melting snow; "a man must do a clock at times."
And again: "Can't a man look at you? - Ugly!"
And yet again: "It seems not. If the police were after you you couldn't be more wrapped and bandaged."
At Gleeson's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the stranger's hostess at the Coach and Horses, and who now drove the Iping coach to Sidderbridge Junction, coming towards him on his return from that place. Hall had evidently been "stopping a bit" at Sidderbridge, to judge by his driving. "'Good evening, Teddy" he said, passing.
"You've got a strange one at home!" said Teddy.
Hall very sociably stopped the coach. "What's that?" he asked.
"Strange-looking customer stopping at the Coach and Horses," said Teddy.
And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque guest. "Looks a bit like a disguise, doesn't it? I'd like to see a man's face if I had him staying in my place," said Henfrey. "But women are so trustful, - where strangers are concerned. He's taken your rooms and he hasn't even given a name, Hall."
"You don't say so!" said Hall, who was a man of slow apprehension.
"Yes," said Teddy. "By the week. Whatever he is, you can't get rid of him in less than a week. And he's got a lot of luggage coming tomorrow, so he says. Let's hope it won't be stones in boxes, Hall."
He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been tricked by a stranger with an empty bag. All in all he left Hall vaguely suspicious. "Get up, old girl," said Hall. "I suppose I must see about this."
Teddy went on his way feeling considerably relieved.
Instead of "seeing about it," however, Hall on his return was severely told off by his wife on the length of time he had spent in Sidderbridge, and his questions were answered sharply and in an imprecise manner. But the seed of suspicion Teddy had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall. "You women don't know everything," said Mr. Hall, determined to discover more about the personality of his guest at the earliest possible opportunity. And after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did at about half-past nine, Mr. Hall went aggressively into the lounge and looked very hard at his wife's furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master there, and examined closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of mathematical calculation the stranger had left. When going to bed he instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely at the stranger's luggage when it came next day.
"You mind your own business, Hall," said Mrs. Hall, "and I'll mind mine."
She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was by no means sure about him in her own mind. In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads, that came following after her at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.