together, and his eyes to the ceiling.
Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss Mary Sutherland. âYes, I did bang out of the house,â she said, âfor it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr Windibank â that is, my father â took it all. He would not go to the police, and he would not go to you, and so at last, as he would do nothing, and kept on saying that there was no harm done, it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away to you.â
âYour father?â said Holmes. âYour stepfather, surely, since the name is different?â
âYes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself.â
âAnd your mother is alive?â
âOh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasnât best pleased, Mr Holmes, when she married again so soon after fatherâs death, and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, 5 and he left a tidy business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr Hardy, the foreman, but when Mr Windibank came he made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines. They got four thousand seven hundred for goodwill and interest, which wasnât near as much as father could have got if he had been alive.â
I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.
âYour own little income,â he asked, âdoes it come out of the business?â
âOh, no, sir, it is quite separate, and was left me by my uncle Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand Stock, paying 4½ per cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interestâ
âYou interest me extremely,â said Holmes. âAnd since you draw so large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge in every way. I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about sixty pounds.â
âI could do with much less than that, Mr Holmes, but you understand that as long as I live at home I donât wish to be a burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course that is only just for the time. Mr Windibank draws my interest every quarter, and pays it over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day.â
âYou have made your position very clear to me,â said Holmes. âThis is my friend, Dr Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr Hosmer Angel.â
A flush stole over Miss Sutherlandâs face, and she picked nervously at the fringe of her jacket. âI met him first at the gasfittersâ ball,â she said. âThey used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us, and sent them to mother. Mr Windibank did not wish us to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday school treat. But this time I was set on going, and I would go, for what right had he to prevent? He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all fatherâs friends were to be there. And he said that I had nothing fit to wear, when I had my purple plush that I had never so much astaken out of the drawer. At last, when nothing else would do, he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went, mother and I, with Mr Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it was there I met Mr Hosmer Angel.â
âI suppose,â said Holmes, âthat when Mr Windibank came back from France, he was
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