"Do you think he is a detective?"
"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "If he is, he has been imported from the provinces. He is not a Scotland Yard man. He may, of course, be an old police pensioner, and I have been trying to trace him from that source."
"It should not be difficult to find out all about him," said Mr. Briggerland easily. "A man with his afflictions should be pretty well-known."
He looked at his watch.
"My appointment at Norwood is at eleven o'clock," he said. He made a little grimace of disgust.
"Would you rather I went?" asked the girl.
Mr. Briggerland would much rather that she had undertaken the disagreeable experience which lay before him, but he dare not confess as much.
"You, my dear? Of course not! I would not allow you to have such an experience. No, no, I don't mind it a bit."
Nevertheless, he tossed down two long glasses of brandy before he left.
His car set him down before the iron gates of a squat and ugly stucco building, surrounded by high walls, and the uniformed attendant, having examined his credentials, admitted him. He had to wait a little while before a second attendant arrived to conduct him to the medical superintendent, an elderly man who did not seem overwhelmed with joy at the honour Mr. Briggerland was paying him.
"I'm sorry I shan't be able to show you round, Mr. Briggerland," he said. "I have an engagement in town, but my assistant, Dr. Carew, will conduct you over the asylum and give you all the information you require. This, of course, as you know, is a private institution. I should have thought you would have got more material for your book in one of the big public asylums. The people who are sent to Norwood, you know, are not the mild cases, and you will see some rather terrible sights. You are prepared for that?"
Mr. Briggerland nodded. He was prepared to the extent of two full noggins of brandy. Moreover, he was well aware that Norwood was the asylum to which the more dangerous of lunatics were transferred.
Dr. Carew proved to be a young and enthusiastic alienist whose heart and soul was in his work.
"I suppose you are prepared to see jumpy things," he said with a smile, as he conducted Mr. Briggerland along a stone-vaulted corridor.
He opened a steel gate, the bars of which were encased with thick layers of rubber, crossed a grassy plot (there were no stone-flagged paths at Norwood) and entered one of the three buildings which constituted the asylum proper.