FIRST STEPS

The messenger whom Blick had sent into Selcaster that morning, before he himself went up to Markenmore Court to attend the Coroner’s inquest, had carried a letter to the principal bookseller and stationer in the old city. There were certain things that Blick found himself in great need of in tackling the problems which had just been put before him; the bookseller was the man to supply him. And now here were the bookseller’s parcels—one, a long, rolled thing, carefully wrapped in canvas; the other a fat little parcel in brown paper. Blick undid that first and drew out and laid on his table a folding road map, a general map of the county, two or three local guide-books, illustrated by photographs, a more ambitious work,Environs of Selcaster, also full of pictures, a Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, and a local time-table. He looked over all these carefully as he laid them out—they were just what he wanted. But he felt still greater interest in the long, canvas-covered parcel, which, divested of its wrappings, proved to contain the Government Ordnance Map of the Markenmore village and immediate surroundings—a big square thing, on stout paper, wherein every road, bylane, footpath, house, cottage, meadow, wood, field, coppice, river, stream, hedgerow, stile, was marked, named, and measured. Blick’s detective instincts rejoiced at the sight of that masterly performance—he blessed the men of the Ordnance Survey service for their meticulous care in preparing it. Going out in search of Grimsdale, he procured some tin tacks from him; with these he fastened his Ordnance Map to a convenient blank space on the wall of his sitting-room, and for the next half-hour stood smoking his pipe in front of it. At the end of that time he had memorized the general lie of his surroundings and committed the more important place-names to the secret cells of his quick brain.

He turned then to the guide-books, maps, and timetables, and for two hours pored over them with absorbed intentness. He wanted to know all about roads, railways, and times—spade-work this, but of high importance. And he saw at once that, as Walkinshaw had said, during the informal talk which had followed on the adjournment, Markenmore lay near the middle of a sort of triangle, with main roads running along each side. The triangle formed by these roads was of the sort which has two sides longer than the third, but are equal to each other; the third was of further extent. Markenmore lay in the south-west part of this triangle, inclining towards the corner made by the bare line and the longer line of the three; consequently it was nearer to two sides of the triangle than to the third, and therefore to two of the main roads than to the other. Now of these three main roads, two, both starting from London, ran to the Court, within a few miles of Markenmore; the third ran all the way along the coast itself. As regards highways, then, Markenmore was in direct communication with London, exactly sixty-five miles to the north-east, and with several coast towns at nearer distances.

But in addition to the triangle made by these main roads, there was yet another, made by railways. The railways, indeed, followed, and ran parallel with the highways; they corresponded to them in every respect; road and rail ran alongside each other, with no greater intervening space at any point than a mile or so. Markenmore was within easy distance of these main railway routes. Several stations could be easily gained from it. Selcaster itself lay two and a half miles to the south-east; Mitbourne about the same distance to the east; there was a somewhat important junction three miles to the south-west; a roadside station four miles due north. And on turning to his time-table, Blick discovered that between four and six o’clock in the morning, there were, taking these four stations altogether, a respectable number of trains going north or south, east or west, and that from two stations, the junction aforesaid and the one to the north, there were at a quarter to six every morning, workmen’s special trains, which doubtless conveyed large numbers of craftsmen, artisans and labourers into the big shipping port a few miles away on the coast. Altogether, he saw that a smart, astute man would have no difficulty in getting away unobserved from the Markenmore district by an early morning train, in any one of at least six separate directions.

Turning again to the question of access and excess by the roads, Blick remembered what Walkinshaw had said about the facilities which the district afforded for successfully hiding a motor-car while its owner or occupant paid a visit. Here the Ordnance Map on the wall gave him great help. The entire contour and configuration of the country was plainly shown. North and north-east of Markenmore village, behind Greycloister, Mr. John Harborough’s big house, The Warren, Mr. Fransemmery’s residence, and Woodland Cottage, Mrs. Braxfield’s domain, lay over downs, which, bleak and bare, in the main, were intersected by deep lanes, and honeycombed by disused chalk-pits, thickly grown over with vegetation and shrubbery; there were also plantations, coppices, and here and there deep woods. It would be an easy thing for any one to turn aside from a main road into these solitudes, leave a motor-car in the shadows of some old, unworked pit, or amongst the elms and beeches of a wood, while he came down into the village. Moreover, Blick noticed that on the Ordnance Map were marked several grass tracks across the downs; now, he had already seen enough of the downs about Markenmore Hollow to know that the turf up there was so wiry, resilient, and firm that you could drive an automobile across it, almost anywhere, with as great ease as on a macadamized road and without leaving any trace. Therefore a man might have turned off the main roads, crossed the downs to some point within a couple of miles of the village, left his car in some convenient old chalk-pit, and felt assured that no one would know how he came nor how he left. Up there, on those solitudes, there was not a house, not a cottage, not even an outlying farm, marked on the map.

So much for these matters—Blick now turned to a third. Grimsdale had said that when the three men left his house at a quarter-past three on Tuesday morning, he saw them walk up the road in the direction of Greycloister and Mitbourne; Blick directed his attention to this road. Immediately in front of the Sceptre, flanking on its front garden, in fact, was the main road of the village; at the corner of the garden it divided; one branch, to the right, turning off, direct, to Selcaster; the other, on the left, turning to Mitbourne, and, at about three hundred yards from the Sceptre, passing the entrance gates of Greycloister. Now according to Grimsdale, the three men took this road and disappeared along it. But Guy Markenmore, if the medical evidence was reliable, was shot dead, about four o’clock, at Markenmore Hollow, about a mile northward of this road. How had he come there? The Ordnance Map and its meticulously careful markings, showed that. Two hundred yards from the Sceptre Inn, on the Mitbourne road, there were two footpaths, one on either side of the way. One, on the south, or right-hand side, went across the meadows in the directions of Selcaster; the other, on the north, or left-hand side, turned up to the downs, between Greycloister and Woodland Cottage. Near Markenmore Hollow—in fact, at the very spot whereat Guy Markenmore’s dead body had been found by the ploughman, Hobbs, this path struck into another, which led direct to Mitbourne Station. And on seeing this, Blick came to a conclusion: When the three men came to these footpaths, they separated. One man either turned back to the village (unlikely, thought Blick) or took the right-hand footpath to Selcaster (very probable, Blick considered); the other two men, of whom Guy Markenmore was certainly one, took the left-hand path, and climbed the hill-side to Markenmore Hollow. There Guy Markenmore was suddenly murdered, and whichever man it was who was with him, whether the presumed American who had come to the Sceptre at nine o’clock on Monday night, or the man who had been given admittance at two o’clock on Tuesday morning, was the murderer.

Arrived at this conclusion, Blick felt somewhat cheerful. He refilled and lighted his pipe, put his hands in his pockets, and lounged out of his sitting-room, across the hall, and into the bar-parlour. This was years before the imposition of those rigorous licensing restrictions which now prevent the free-born Englishman from taking his ease in his inn whenever he feels so disposed, and though it was only five o’clock in the afternoon the cosy bar-parlour contained several customers—village idlers who were discussing the inquest and the tragedy that had given rise to it. All and each already knew Blick as the great London detective who had come there to find out who had killed poor young Master Guy, and to hang that same varmint when found, and they stared at Blick’s light hair, blue eyes, chubby countenance, and smart town clothes as if wondering how such a youthful-looking cherub could possibly possess the faculties of a ferret and the persistency of a foxhound. But Blick, beyond giving them a friendly nod, paid no attention to these patriarchs and wiseacres—he fully intended to cultivate their acquaintance at some future time, but just then he wanted a word or two with Grimsdale.

Grimsdale, in his shirt-sleeves, was polishing glasses at the farther end of the bar; Blick strolled up and leaned over to him.

“I say!” he whispered. “A word or two with you, Grimsdale. That pipe you found——”

“Yes, sir?” returned Grimsdale, leaning across the bar.

“I suppose,” continued Blick, “that you took a good look at it?”

“I did, sir.”

“Did you notice the name or initials of the makers?”

“Yes, sir. It was one of those L. & Co.’s pipes. I know ’em well enough, Mr. Blick—my old guv’nor, Sir James Marchant, used to smoke ’em. He’s given me one of his old ones, now and again.”

“One of Löewe & Company’s, eh?” said Blick, who had already assured himself of that fact, and only wanted to know if the landlord knew.

“L. & Co.’s sir—that’s what I call ’em; that’s how they’re stamped—on the wood, and on the silver mount—and of course, markings on the silver—a lion and a crown and so on, same as all silver articles are.”

“Did you notice anything else about the pipe?”

“I noticed two things, Mr. Blick—I’m one of those that’s given to noticing. It was a newish pipe; the other was this—there was a slight, very slight chip in the edge of the bowl, as if its owner had knocked out the ashes against something sharp—perhaps against the edge of a fender, or against the heel of his boot, and caught a nail there; I’ve seen many a good pipe chipped that way, however sound the wood is.”

“Good!” said Blick. “You’ve certainly a talent for observation.”

Grimsdale smiled.

“Aye, well!” he said, sinking his voice still lower. “I didn’t say anything about it in that witness-box, but—between you and me—when I learnt all I did about this murder, I put a mark of my own on that pipe!”

“You did?” exclaimed Blick. “What mark?”

“Bit of a cross on the silver band,” said Grimsdale. He winked knowingly at the detective. “I’d know my own mark again—anywhere!”

Blick nodded. Then he glanced round at the men in the far corner of the room.

“Gossiping about all this, I suppose?” he asked.

“Aye!” assented Grimsdale. “Lord bless you!—they’ll talk of nothing else for many a day—unless there’s a four-legged fowl or a calf with three heads comes along! It’s pie to them, all this, Mr. Blick. You being a Londoner, you don’t know what village folk are for talk and gossip!”

“Who’s the biggest gossip in the place?” asked Blick.

“Benny Cripps, the sexton,” replied Grimsdale promptly. “Get talking to him, and he’ll tell you the whole history of Markenmore and every man, woman, and child in it, high and low, rich and poor, since Doomsday—whenever that was, and it must be a long time ago. They say he knows the pedigree of these Markenmores, for instance, better than they do themselves!”

“An interesting old party,” remarked Blick. “Where does he hang out?”

“Next cottage to the churchyard,” replied Grimsdale. “Old, thatched cottage.”

“Well,” said Blick, lifting his elbows off the bar-counter. “I’m going for a stroll—to have a look round. You’ll have supper ready for me about eight?”

“Right, sir—got a nice roast chicken for you,” answered Grimsdale. “A beauty!”

Blick laughed, nodded, and went away into the village street. He had an eye for the picturesque, this tracker of criminals, and the little south-country settlement, half as ancient as the hill-sides above it, appealed to him. Markenmore was a place of tiny thatched cottages, set in gardens and orchards, with here and there a substantial farmstead, set back from the road, in its paddock or home-garth; its main feature stood in its midst—a grey old church, whose tower and spire rose high above the elms and poplars that fenced in the churchyard. In these early spring days there was a great sense of peace about these rustic surroundings, and it struck Blick that it seemed odd that he should be there, amidst so much natural serenity, under his present circumstances. Everything just then, from the new flowers and plants in the cottage gardens to the new nests high in the fresh-leaved trees, spoke of life—and his task was to discover the author of a crime, the cause of a violent death.

He was presently reminded of that death and its consequences by the sight of an old man, who, in a nook of the tree-surrounded churchyard, was superintending the digging of two graves. Blick remembered then that Sir Anthony Markenmore and his elder son were to be buried side by side on the next day but one—the old man, accordingly, must be the sexton, Benny Cripps, of whom Grimsdale had just spoken. He entered the churchyard and went up to him; the sexton, a gnarled old fellow of apparently seventy, turned from his two diggers and gave the detective a knowing nod. He sat down on a box-tomb dose by, and pulling out a short clay pipe proceeded to light it.

“You be the young London feller what’s come here to find out who killed young Mr. Guy, I do hear?” he observed, looking Blick over with critical eyes. “A sharp ’un you be at your job, too, I do understand. Well, and I ’low as how you’ve got your work set, my fine young man, I do so! ’Tain’t going to be found out in a day, ain’t that, nor yet in a week. Didn’t make much out at the Coroner’s ’quest, neither—no!”

“You were there, eh?” asked Blick.

“There I was, master, and hear all as was said. And come away about so wise as I did go. Lord bless ’ee, ’tain’t only just starting this here! You’m like one o’ they exploring fellers that goes into furrin parts, setting out, like, on a path that you don’t know the end of!”

“I guess you’re about right,” admitted Blick. “Bit of a tangle, isn’t it?”

”I believe ’ee, my son! And so far as I see, I don’t see no sort of a clue as you can lay hands on to guide ’ee, like. All same, I do have my own opinions—sure! And ain’t going to alter ’em for nobody—not for the King himself, and no disrespect to him, neither.”

Blick sat down by the old man’s side, and lighted his own pipe.

“You’re Mr. Cripps, aren’t you?” he asked. “Sexton, I think?”

“Benjamin Cripps I be, young master, and sexton I am, and parish clerk, and a mort o’ other offices, and the one man in this here village can’t do without, nohow. Five vicars there’s been in Markenmore i’ my time and here I am—buried four of ’em! They comes and they goes—but I stops. Been parish clerk here five-and-forty years, and my father he was same for nigh as many, and his father before him; he was same, too, but for over fifty, the Crippses, we’ve been in this parish as long as they Markenmores themselves, and buried a sight or ’em, and now I’m going to bury two more. This here church, now, you might say as how we Crippses, it belongs to we—knows all about it, we do, and about most things in this here village. Keeps it—so to speak.”

“And what do you think about this affair, Mr. Cripps?” asked Blick suavely. “A man of your experience will have an opinion. Do you call it a murder, now?”

“Murder I do entitle it, my dear young London man, and a grievous and bloody one! Ain’t going for to say as how young Master Guy was a parrygon of righteousness, ’cause he wasn’t, and didn’t make no pretensions to being one o’ them here saints what we reads about in the prayer-book. But murdered he was, and cruel shameful; and you ain’t got on the real truth o’ the matter I do suppose—no, nor won’t yet awhile. But I hope ’ee will, and I’ll tramp cheerful to hear whoever done it sentenced to be hanged—so I will!”

“You haven’t any idea of your own about it, I suppose?” suggested Blick.

“Ain’t got what you might call precise ideas—yet,” declared Cripps. “But Lord bless ’ee, of course it do be something to do with something rising out of that there young Jezebel at the Dower House!—and I don’t care if she do hear me say so. Her be a terr’ble sinful and scarlet lot, that! I mind she well enough when her pa was vicar here, and her a young lass that should ha’ been minding her hemming and stitching, and such-like women’s work. But her didn’t never take to no such peaceful okkypations; her was allus a-trapesing about wi’ a pack o’ young fellers at her skirts, and a-setting ’em by the ears. Lot o’ trouble her occasioned when she was a girl, and now as soon as her comes back to the place, her starts it again.”

“Then you think Mrs. Tretheroe’s something to do with it?” asked Blick.

“Don’t say hers anything to do wi’ it, active like,” replied the old sexton. “But I do say as how, in my opinion, hers at the bottom of it, one way or another. Lord bless ’ee, some on ’em—young gentlemen—was for fighting each other about her before her was eighteen year old! If it had been i’ the old days, there’d ha’ been a mort o’ they duels fought about her. Her was that sort—first favouring one, and then t’other till they was all mad, like!”

“I suppose Mr. Guy Markenmore was pretty mad about her at that time, eh?” suggested Blick.

“Umph!” said Cripps. “Runned after her a deal, he did, to be sure. But he was a powerful bad ’un for running after women-folk of all sorts, high and low—turned the heads of half the lasses in this village, he did! Lord bless ’ee, he was always a-making love, all round—couldn’t help it, seemed so. Left some aching hearts behind him, did Master Guy when he went away to London town.”

“What, amongst the village girls?” asked Blick.

“Aye—and ’mongst the village men!” growled the sexton. “There was more than one young feller that had reason to hate him, so there was! Dead he is, and not to be spoke ill of now—but he was a bad ’un, sure-ly!”

This paradoxical answer suggested a new train of thought to Blick, and he presently went away to think it over. But ere he had gone far, he remembered that he had a question to ask of Mrs. Tretheroe, so he passed through the village and betook himself to the front door of the Dower House.

CHAPTER XII

The Dower House was a big, rambling, old-fashioned place which stood within large, enclosed grounds and gardens of its own, in the south-east corner of Markenmore Park, a little way out of the village, and about two hundred yards from the Sceptre Inn. Nearly as capacious as Markenmore Court itself, it possessed a considerable range of stabling and outhouses, and was altogether a residence of wide extent and accommodation. Blick took a rapid, estimating view of it and its surroundings as he walked up the drive; everything had lately been done up and put in order there; the Dower House, he thought, was much more pretentious in appearance than the Court. The ancient residence of the Markenmore family was outwardly shabby, neglected, much in want of fresh paint; the Dower House was spick and span; its lawn and gardens trim and carefully kept. And Blick was not at all surprised when, in answer to his knock and ring, the door was opened by a very tall, supercilious footman, clad in a gorgeous livery. It appeared to be an effort to this person to bring his eyes down to the level of the caller’s face.

“Mrs. Tretheroe at home?” demanded Blick.

“Mrs. Tretheroe is indisposed,” answered the footman. “She is not receiving today.”

Blick pulled out his card-case.

“I am sorry to hear that Mrs. Tretheroe isn’t well,” he remarked. “But I saw her an hour or two ago, and I think she will give me a few minutes’ interview on very urgent business. Just give her my card, if you please.”

The footman took the card gingerly, glanced at it, stared at Blick’s youthfulness a little wonderingly, and backing away from the door, seemed to invite the caller inside. Blick stepped into an outer hall.

“My orders were very precise,” remarked the footman, grudgingly. “But if it’s very important business——”

“It is!” interrupted Blick. “Very!”

“I’ll see Mrs. Tretheroe’s maid,” said the footman. “Please to wait.”

He vanished into the gloom of an inner hall, behind aportièreof heavy curtains, and Blick, left alone, looked round him. The place in which he waited, alone, was small; an ancient oak press stood on one side of him; on the other, a big stand, wherefrom hung a medley of coats, cloaks, and outdoor wraps. And amongst them, the most prominent object was a smart Raglan overcoat, of a brightish blue shade, which Blick recognized at once. He had seen it at the inquest that morning—worn by the big blond-moustached man who had sat at Mrs. Tretheroe’s right hand throughout the proceedings.

With one of those rare flashes of intuition which are the very inspiration of genius in a man of his profession, Blick moved like lightning to that coat and slid his right hand into the nearest pocket. He felt a pair of gloves—and beneath the gloves, a pipe. With his ears strained to the keenest tension and his eye kept warily on the folding curtains, he drew that pipe out and gave one glance at it. He would have chuckled with delight had he dared—for this was the pipe that Grimsdale had found on the supper-table at the Sceptre! There was no doubt of it—there was the slight chip in the briar-wood. . . .

“Where is Mr. Blick?” demanded a woman’s voice, somewhere behind the curtains. “In the front hall?”

Blick slipped the pipe back into the pocket, moved himself six inches, and was staring with much interest at a fox’s mark, mounted on the wall, when the curtains parted and a woman appeared. For a second he looked at her with suddenly awakened interest; and she was no ordinary woman, he decided. Primly and somewhat coquettishly dressed in black, with a smart cap and an even smarter apron of spotless muslin, she looked more French than English, and as vivacious as she was undeniably pretty. But the prettiness was somewhat faded; this, decided Blick, was a woman of thirty-five or so who had had affairs in her times; there were the signs of old fires in her brilliant eyes and about her lips; it seemed to him that she was the sort in whom secrets lie sleeping. And she was the sort of a woman, too, who could not look at a man without smiling at him: she smiled now as she glanced at the latter.

“Mr. Blick?” she said in a soft, demure voice. “You want to see Mrs. Tretheroe? She is not very well—that affair this morning, you know, and all the rest of it—nervous headache. But if it’s business——”

“It is, but nothing to distress Mrs. Tretheroe,” answered Blick. “A question or two.”

The woman held aside one of the curtains and revealed a roomy inner hall, on one side of which rose a galleried staircase.

“Come this way, please,” she said.

Blick followed her up the stair. An open door at the end of the gallery showed him a drawing-room, and in it a grand piano; at the piano sat the blond-moustached man. He was singing, evidently to please himself, and accompanying his fine baritone voice with soft chords. His conductress glanced at Blick and smiled again.

“The Baron—singing Italian love-songs!” she murmured. “He prefers that to shooting, or hunting, or golf! Tastes differ—don’t they?”

“With nationalities,” said Blick. He had already decided that Mrs. Tretheroe’s maid was a bit of a character, worth cultivating, and he smiled back at her. “I guess he’s not English, eh?” he suggested.

“German!” answered the maid knowingly. “All fat!” She laughed, paused before a door, tapped gently, and opening it, motioned Blick to enter. “Mr. Blick, ma’am.”

Mrs. Tretheroe’s voice, somewhat languid in tone, bade Mr. Blick enter, and he walked into what he immediately took to be the boudoir wherein its occupant had held hertête-à-têtewith Guy Markenmore after their meeting on the Monday night. Although it was still quite light outside, a rose-tinted lamp was burning in this luxurious nook, and by its subdued gleam Blick saw Mrs. Tretheroe, negligently but becomingly attired, lounging on a sofa; if she was pale, he thought, she was perhaps the more striking. And whether she had a nervous headache or not, she was smoking; the room was heavy with the peculiar scent of fine Turkish tobacco, and on a stand near its mistress’s sofa stood an open box of cigarettes.

“Take a chair,” said Mrs. Tretheroe, glancing approvingly at Blick’s good looks and smart clothes. “This”—she pointed to an easy chair close to herself. “Have a cigarette, won’t you? I’m smoking to soothe my headache.—I got quite upset by all that business this morning. Such an awful lot of talk about nothing, don’t you think?”

Blick out of sheer politeness, took a cigarette, though he hated Turkish tobacco like poison, and dropped into an easy chair.

“Depends,” he answered tersely. “Sometimes you have to do an awful lot of talking over things of this sort—no end of questions, you know, before you can get at one little bit of truth. But I don’t want to bore you with a lot of questions, Mrs. Tretheroe.”

“Oh, that’s all right!” replied Mrs. Tretheroe, complacently. “Rather interesting, after all; I suppose you do get a lot of interest in your work, don’t you? You ought to,” she added, giving her visitor a direct glance out of her half-shut eyes. “You’re so very young—a mere boy, I should think!”

“Not quite such a chicken as I look!” retorted Blick, with a laugh. “I’ve had twelve years of it. But now—business! I’m sure you won’t mind if I ask you one or two personal questions, Mrs. Tretheroe? Well, first—I see that on the third finger of your right hand, you wear a somewhat curious ring.”

“This!” answered Mrs. Tretheroe. “You may look at it.” She stretched out her hand and laid it, a very slim and shapely member, in Blick’s palm. “Odd, isn’t it?” she added, as, after a moment, during which she turned her hand over, she withdrew it. “Unusual!”

“It’s a very uncommon sort of thing, I should think,” replied Blick. “Now, do you know if the late Mr. Guy Markenmore had a ring like that?”

“Of course he had!” she answered. “It was he who bought both rings—years ago. He and I were once together in Portsmouth, and in one of those queer old curiosity shops that you find in those sort of places, we saw these two rings. He bought them, for a pound or two, and we agreed to wear them for ever. Poor Guy!”

“Was he wearing that ring when you saw him the other night?” asked Blick.

“He was! He told me he’d never ceased to wear it—and I assured him that I’d always worn mine.”

“He had it on his finger when he left you?”

“Certainly he had!”

“Well—it wasn’t there when he was found next morning,” said Blick. “That’s a fact!”

Mrs. Tretheroe started.

“That wasn’t mentioned at the inquest!” she exclaimed.

“No,” said Blick. “I didn’t know of the ring’s existence until Miss Valencia Markenmore told me—after the adjournment. She had noticed that her brother was wearing it when he called at the Court before seeing you.”

“And—it was not found on him?”

“It was certainly not found on him.”

Mrs. Tretheroe threw away her cigarette. She frowned, and her eyes grew sombre.

“Then—that’s another proof that Harborough killed him!” she exclaimed.

“How?” asked Blick.

“Jealousy! He killed him out of jealousy, and took the ring from him when he was dead—mad with jealousy because Guy had something on him connected with me!”

“You really believe, Mrs. Tretheroe, that Harborough killed Guy Markenmore because he was jealous of him—about you?”

“Yes, I do—I’m certain of it!”

“But,” said Blick, “Harborough said—you remember his evidence?—that he’d been cured of his—er—passion for you some years ago.”

“Don’t believe it!” answered Mrs. Tretheroe. “If he had, then it all came back to him when he met me the other afternoon! I saw quite well that Harborough was just as madly in love with me as ever! Then—Guy came along, and—and—well, as I said, he and I made it up quickly. And he met with Harborough up there on the hill-side, and of course they quarrelled, and Harborough killed him! I don’t care what you police people say, nor the Coroner and his jury, nor the magistrates—I know!”

“Then you don’t pay any attention to the evidence about the two men who were with Mr. Guy Markenmore at the Sceptre that night, Mrs. Tretheroe?”

“Not a bit! A mere business meeting!”

“He didn’t tell you whom he was going to meet?”

“Not at all—not one word! Merely a business appointment. I wasn’t interested.”

“Well,” said Blick, after a moment’s silence. “There’s just another question I want to put to you. You had three or four more guests in your house, I believe, at that time; you don’t think it possible that some one of them was the second man who turned up at the Sceptre?”

“Certainly not!” exclaimed Mrs. Tretheroe. “Of course, I know every one of them, well. Not one of them as much as I knew Guy! They were all military men—men I knew in India. They all had their wives here with them, except, of course, Baron von Eckhardstein—he’s not a military man, nor married. But until he came here, to my house-party, he’d never even heard of the Markenmore family. Why!—does somebody suggest this?”

“Not at all!” replied Blick hastily. “But in cases of this sort, when there are strangers about in a place—well, you’ve got to find out who they were, you know.”

“I’ve told you who my guests were,” said Mrs. Tretheroe. “Of course, the mere idea that any of them went to the Sceptre at that time of night is ridiculous. No—the meeting at the Sceptre amounts to nothing. You concentrate on Harborough—he did it! He was always a man of mad, unreasonable, ungovernable temper, or perhaps I might have married him, once.”

Blick said nothing in reply to this. He rose to go, and Mrs. Tretheroe, with another approving look, gave him her hand.

“Come and see me again—to tell me how you’re getting on,” she said. “Of course, I’m awfully interested!”

Blick made his way downstairs. The door of the drawing-room was still open, and the Baron von Eckhardstein was still softly singing sentimental ditties. At the foot of the staircase the maid suddenly appeared, and smiled. Blick smiled back.

“I haven’t made your mistress’s headache any worse,” he remarked.

“The headache’s too much cigarette smoking,” she whispered, with a look. “I say!”

“What?” asked Blick, whispering too.

“Has anything—been found out?” she asked.

“What, yet? No!—too early,” answered Blick. “Why—do you know anything?”

“I? Good Heavens, no! Merely curious! being a woman.”

“What’s your name?” enquired Blick, with a smile.

“Halliwell,” she replied quickly. “Why?”

“Miss or Mrs.?” asked Blick.

“Miss!—What makes you ask?”

“Just wanted to know,” said Blick. “I shall be here some time, most likely, and I’m sure to meet you again.”

Then, with another smile, he went away, and once clear of the house dismissed everything but one thought. That was an important one. Von Eckhardstein, on leaving the improvised court-room that morning, after the Coroner’s adjournment, had possessed himself, in passing the table whereon it was laid, of the tobacco-pipe which had been left at the Sceptre. Now then—was von Eckhardstein the man who had left it there?

Blick had a trick of imagining possible reasons for anything: he began to invent some now. Von Eckhardstein might be one of those folk who have a mania for collecting objects connected with crime—he, Blick, had come across more than one maniac of that sort, and knew that such would stop at nothing, not even theft, to achieve their desires. Or, he might know the man who had left the pipe, and have quietly abstracted it, in the crush and confusion, with the idea of destroying evidence against a friend. But, anyhow, there the pipe was, in von Eckhardstein’s pocket, where he had slipped it on picking it up from the table—and Blick had seen and identified it.

“And if it’s his,” mused Blick, “then he’s the man who went to the Sceptre at two o’clock last Tuesday morning, and left at three-fifteen with Guy Markenmore and the other chap! That’s a dead sure thing!”

He strolled back to the Inn, and in due course sat down to his supper. Grimsdale tapped at his door and came in, just as he had finished.

“There’s some of the rustics talking about this murder, in the kitchen,” he remarked, with a sly smile. “Would you like to hear what they’ve got to say?”

“They wouldn’t talk before me,” said Blick.

“I’ll put you where you’ll not be seen,” answered Grimsdale. “Come with me.”

He led the detective across the entrance hall, past the bar-parlour, and into a pantry which lay between a private sitting-room and the Inn kitchen. The pantry was unlighted, save for a latticed window set in the kitchen wall; Grimsdale motioned Blick to approach and look through this.

“They can’t see you from their side,” he whispered. “But you can see and hear everything from this. Listen!”

Blick put his face near the lattice and looked through. Half a dozen labourers, mostly middle-aged or elderly men, sat near a cheery fire in the old-fashioned kitchen. Pots of ale on the tables before them, pipes of tobacco at their lips. They were all typical rustics, gnarled, weather-beaten, some dull of expression, some uncannily shrewd of eye: one such was just then laying down the law.

“Ain’t no manner of doubt as how Master Guy was done to death felonious!” he was saying. “Murder that is, and nobody can say as how ’tain’t, sure-ly! But who done that ain’t going for to be found so easy as some med make out. Done in a corner, as you med say, and nobody ain’t the wiser.”

“Somebody murdered he, all same,” observed another. “I ’low there ain’t no other way o’ considering the matter than that. But who he be I dunno, and I be mortal sure nobody else don’t know, faith!”

“Well, ’tain’t in my conscience for to say as how I b’lieve Master John Harborough, up to Greycloister, done it,” said a third man. “I can’t bring myself for to agree that a gentleman born ’ud be gettin’ out of his bed at three o’clock of a morning for to goo shooting at another gentleman! ’Twould seem a ’nation queer sort of a Christian privilege, would so! Noo—I ain’t agoing to consider that, nohow!”

“Then who done it?” asked somebody.

Nobody spoke for awhile; then a dark-faced man, who up to this had sat silently smoking in a corner leaned forward.

“I reckon naught o’ these Crowner’s quests and a pack o’ lawyers and police fellers!” said he, with decision. “Allus goos a-huntin’ the wrong hare, they does! Don’t us as has lived in these here parts all our lives know well enough that this young man left a pack o’ mortal enemies behind him when he went away, seven years it is agoo? Ain’t there men round about here as had sweethearts and lassies whose heads he turned with his ways? Wasn’t he allus a-making love to all the good-looking young women? Doon’t ’ee tell me!—there’s more nor one man this side the downs as ’ud be glad o’ the chance of getting his knife into Master Guy Markenmore—or a pistol-bullet, either! That’s how he come by his death, so I do think!”

There was a murmur of general assent. An old man’s voice arose out of it.

“The ways of Providence be uncommon curious!” he piped. “Shouldn’t wonder if what Ben there say be of the nature of truth. Revenge be a mighty strong weapon in a man’s right hand, and it do grow all the stronger wi’ keeping, like good ale. Aye, sure, it med be a matter o’ revenge——”

Blick presently went away, to think over this suggestion. Grimsdale came to him again, looking mysterious.

“There’s a young man out there in the garden wants to see you—alone, in secret,” he said.

“Who is he?” asked Blick.

Grimsdale gave him a knowing glance.

“One of Mrs. Tretheroe’s grooms,” he answered.

CHAPTER XIII

The detective instinct which was Blick’s second nature rose, strong and eager, when he heard this announcement. He, too, glanced at Grimsdale in knowing fashion.

“Something to tell?” he suggested.

“Didn’t say as much to me,” answered the landlord, “but I should say so. Came hanging round our side-door till he got a sight of me, and then asked if you were in, and if he could see you, all to yourself—didn’t want anybody else to know.”

“Bring him in—and tell him nobody will know anything whatever about it,” commanded Blick. “Strictly private, eh?”

Grimsdale glanced at the window, and crossing over to it, drew its curtains. He left the room—to return a minute later with a young man in whipcord clothes and smart Newmarket gaiters; a shrewd-eyed, keen-faced fellow who regarded the detective pretty much as he might have regarded a slippery fox just breaking cover.

“William Pegge, Mr. Blick,” said Grimsdale.

Blick nodded affably to his shy and watchful visitor, and pointed to a chair close to his own by the cheery fire.

“Good evening, Pegge,” he said. “Sit down—will you have a drink?”

Pegge slid into the easy chair, put his hat on the ground, and grinned sheepishly.

“Well, thank you, sir,” he answered. “Don’t mind a drop of ale.”

Blick looked at Grimsdale, who went out and returned with a frothing tankard, which he set down at the groom’s elbow.

“See that we’re not disturbed, Grimsdale,” said Blick. “If anybody—never mind who it is—wants me, say I’m engaged.”

The landlord withdrew and closed the door and Blick pushed his tobacco pouch over to his visitor, who was fingering his pipe.

“Try a bit of that,” he said hospitably, “and light up. Well—you wanted to have a talk with me, Pegge. What is it?”

Before Pegge replied to this direct invitation, he filled and lighted his pipe, got it fairly going, and lifting the tankard of ale to his lips, murmured an expression of his best respect to his entertainer. Then, with a look round his surroundings, indicative of a desire for strict privacy, he gave Blick a shrewd glance.

“I shouldn’t like to get into trouble,” he remarked.

“Just so!” agreed Blick. “You won’t—through anything that you say to me.”

“Nor yet to get anybody else into trouble,” continued Pegge. “That is—unless so be as they’re deserving of it!”

“Exactly!—unless they’re deserving of it,” said Blick. “In that case, you wouldn’t mind?”

“Don’t mind telling what I know to be true,” replied Pegge. He looked the detective well over again. “I s’pose,” he went on, “I s’pose that if I tell you—something—I should have to tell it again—as a witness, like?”

“All depends on what it is, Pegge,” answered Blick. “You might—if it’s very important. Or, you mightn’t—if it’s merely something that you want to tell me, between ourselves. Anyway, whatever it is, you’ll come to no harm—so long as you speak the plain truth.”

“Them witnesses, now?” suggested Pegge. “Before crowners, and magistrates, and judges at the ’sizes—are they protected? Nobody can’t do nothing at ’em for telling what they know, eh?”

“Strictly protected, in every way,” said Blick, with emphatic decision. “Bad job for anybody who interfered with a witness, Pegge! Make yourself comfortable on that point, my lad.”

Pegge nodded, took another mouthful of ale, and seemed to make up his mind.

“Well, I do know something!” he said suddenly. “I was half in a mind to tell it this morning, up there at the inquest——”

“You were there?” asked Blick.

“Most of the time,” assented Pegge. “I heard all that Grimsdale said, anyhow. It was along of what he said that I thought of coming forward, d’ye see, but I didn’t exactly know what to do, and so, when I hear ’em talk about an adjournment, I thought I’d put it off, and think matters over. However, when I hear you were stopping here to look after things, I thought I’d mention it to you, like.”

“Quite right, Pegge—much obliged to you,” said Blick. “Make yourself easy. And now—what is it?”

Pegge removed his pipe from his lips, and leaned a little nearer to his listener.

“Well,” he said, “it’s like this here. You’d hear what Grimsdale said about Mr. Guy Markenmore coming to this house that night before he was murdered, and being in company with two other gentlemen?”

“Of course,” responded Blick, “I heard it.”

“One of ’em,” continued Pegge, “a tall man—tall as Mr. Harborough? So Grimsdale said—from what he see of him, as they was going away?”

“Yes—I remember,” said Blick.

“Well, I’ll tell ’ee something,” Pegge went on, showing signs of rising interest in his own story. “Grimsdale ’ud tell you that I’m groom at Mrs. Tretheroe’s—we’ve a coachman and two grooms there—I’m head groom. Our mistress has five horses at present—couple of hunters, two carriage horses, and a very good cob. Now, on Monday afternoon, this here cob—’tain’t common sort of an animal, for Mrs. Tretheroe, she give a hundred and forty guineas for him only a month since—took ill—colic, or something o’ that sort—and I had to fetch the veterinary surgeon to him. The vet., he was at our place for an hour or two that evening a-doctoring of him, and he sort o’ pulled him round, but says he to our coachman and the rest of us, ‘One of you chaps,’ he says, ‘’ll have to sit up with this cob all night, and look well after him.’ So I offered to do that—t’other two is married men, and lives in the village here; me being a single man, I lives over the stables, d’ye see?”

“I see,” said Blick. “You were on the spot.”

“On the spot, so to speak,” agreed Pegge. “Well, the vet., he leaves us some medicine, and he tells me what to do, all through the night, with this here cob, and so, when it gets late, and all the rest of ’em had gone, I gets my supper in the servants’ hall, and takes a bit o’ something to eat during the night, and settles down as comfortable as I could in the saddle-room, next to the loose-box where we had this poorly cob. He went on all right, that cob did—hadn’t no trouble with he at all, and he’s right now—quite fit again. However, that’s neither here nor there, in a way of speaking—what I mention the cob for is to show you how I come to be up all that Monday night, d’ye see?”

“I understand,” said Blick. “It’s all clear, Pegge. Go ahead!”

“Well,” continued Pegge, “there’s nothing happens till about a quarter to two o’clock in the morning. I know it was that ’cause I had to keep looking at the cob every so often from the time the vet. left him, and that was one of the times. I’d just been into his loose-box, and come out when I remembered that I’d no tobacco left in my pouch. But I had plenty in a tin in my bedroom, so I went off to fetch it. Now then, you must understand that our stabling at the Dower House is separated from the drive by a high hedge of macrocarpus trees—shrubbery, d’ye see? I was going along this hedge side, between it and the coach-house wall, on my way to the stairs that leads up to my bedroom, when I hear somebody coming down the drive, t’other side the hedge—soft, like. So I stops, dead——”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Blick. “What were you walking on, yourself, Pegge? What sort of a pavement, or path?”

“Asphalt—laid down recent,” answered Pegge, promptly. “Runs all along the front of our stabling. Put down when Mrs. Tretheroe came and had things smartened up.”

“And what had you on your feet—what sort of shoes?”

“Pair of old tennis shoes that the housekeeper had given me,” replied Pegge. “Some gentleman had left ’em behind him.”

“Very well,” said Blick. “Go on. You stopped dead——”

“Stopped just where I was, stole in between the bushes, and looked into the drive. Then I see a man coming down it, from the side of the house, where there’s a door by which you can get out into the back gardens. He come right past me, walking on the grass path at the side of the gravel roadway.”

“You saw him clearly?”

“Considering it was night—a clear night, though—I see him as clearly as what I see you! That is—with a bit of difference, like.”

“You saw him clearly enough to know who he was?”

“I did!”

“Well?” asked Blick, eyeing his informant closely. “Who was he?”

Pegge looked with equal closeness at his questioner.

“That German gentleman that’s staying with our missis!” he answered.

“Baron von Eckhardstein?”

“That’s him! The Baron we calls him.”

“You’re absolutely certain of this, Pegge?”

“Take my dying oath of it!” asserted Pegge.

Blick refilled and lighted his pipe, and smoked in silence for a minute or two.

“Well,” he said at last, “where did he go?”

“Went a few yards down the drive, and then turned into a path that goes through the shrubberies towards the main road,” replied Pegge. “It comes out into the main road very nearly opposite the cottages, just beyond this place—the Sceptre. There’s a little iron swing-gate in the holly-hedge—you’ll maybe have noticed it? He’d come on to the road through that—about two hundred yards from here.”

“And you say that was at about a quarter to two, Tuesday morning?”

“At all about that,” affirmed Pegge. “It would be about six or eight minutes to, when I see him. ’Twas a quarter to, anyway, when I see the cob, and I wasn’t in his box many minutes. Then I went straight to get my tobacco-tin, and heard these footsteps.”

“I suppose you thought it was a queer thing—a guest going out of the house at that time of night, didn’t you?” suggested Blick.

“Uncommon queer, I thought!” agreed Pegge. “But then, ’twasn’t any concern of mine. And I shouldn’t ha’ taken much more notice of it if I hadn’t see him again.”

“Oh!” said Blick. “Ah! You did see him again, then?”

“I did—and when it was getting light, too—see him clear enough that time!”

“And what time was that?”

“We’ve a clock over our stables,” said Pegge. “It had just struck four.”

“Four o’clock!” repeated Blick meditatively. “Um! And where did you see him at four o’clock? Same place?”

“No,” replied Pegge. “Just before four o’clock I began to feel as if I could do with a cup of tea. I’d got a teapot with some tea in it, but, of course, I wanted boiling water. Now, we’ve a gas-stove in a little room at the end of the stables that our coachman uses as a sort of sitting-room for himself, d’ye see, so I went off there to light it, and boil some water in a kettle. It struck four while I was in there. I’d just put on the kettle, when I heard it strike four. Now, there’s a window in that little room as looks out on the back gardens—they run from the back of the Dower House to the foot of the park, where it begins to rise towards the downs. There’s a thick plantation of pine and larch between the gardens and the park, and I suddenly see this here Baron come out of it, as if he’d come down from the high ground above.”

“Was he alone?” asked Blick.

“Oh, he was alone, right enough, just as before,” replied Pegge.

“How far away were you from him?”

“Twenty-five or thirty yards.”

“Where did he go that time?”

“Walked down the side of a big holly-hedge towards the same door that I reckon he’d come out of.”

“Could he be seen from the house?”

“No—I reckon not,” said Pegge. “There’s a thick belt of trees—beeches, just come into leaf—between the house and those gardens.”

“You saw him pass that?”

“Saw him go into it,” said Pegge. “Once through it, he’d be close to that side-door I spoke of.”

“I suppose you know the Dower House pretty well, Pegge?” asked Blick.

“Yes,” asserted Pegge. “I was there before Mrs. Tretheroe came and took it. Been there, off and on, ever since I was a young ’un. Went there first when I was fourteen.”

“Well, that side-door, now? What is it. Where does it lead, when you get in?”

”Into a lobby that runs along the back of the house. There’s a staircase opens from it—a wide staircase—that comes out, through a double door at the top, into the big staircase in the hall.”

“So that anybody coming from the bedrooms could easily get at it?”

“Easy enough!” assented Pegge.

“I suppose there’d be none of the servants about at four o’clock in the morning?” enquired Blick, after a moment’s thought.

Pegge opened his mouth in a broad grin.

“Not likely!” he said. “Servants’ getting-up bell goes at six o’clock. Catch any of ’em being up before that!”

“Talking about servants,” observed Blick, “do you know Mrs. Tretheroe’s maid?”

Pegge smiled.

“Daffy Halliwell?” he answered. “Course I do!”

“Well, and who is Daffy Halliwell? And what’s her proper Christian name?”

“Daphne,” said Pegge promptly. “Who is she? Why, her father was a bit of a farmer t’other side of the downs, beyond Markenmore Hollow. Dead now he is. There was two o’ them girls—Daffy and Myra. Daffy went out to India with Mrs. Tretheroe, and come back with her. Myra—I don’t know what’s become o’ she. Disappeared, like, just about that time—though I recollect now she was going to be married to a chap as lived near them—Jim Roper, woodman, to Sir Anthony.”

Blick paid little attention to these details; he was thinking over the principal points of the groom’s information.

“Now, Pegge,” he said a moment later, “an important question—am I the first person to whom you’ve told this story?”

“You’re the very first!” replied Pegge promptly. “I haven’t mentioned it to a soul but you!”

“Didn’t ever remark to any of your fellow-servants that you’d seen Baron von Eckhardstein out at that time of the morning?” suggested Blick.

“No!” affirmed Pegge. “I’ll not deny that I might ha’ done, just in a casual way, if I hadn’t heard of Mr. Guy Markenmore’s murder that morning. But I did hear of it, very early—earlier than most folks—before either our coachman or the second groom came to the stables—so I said nothing.”

“Who told you of the murder—so early?” asked Blick.

“Our village policeman,” replied Pegge. “I was standing at the end of our east walk when he and Hobbs went up the hill-side to the downs; Hobbs had been to fetch him. I should have gone up with them to Markenmore Hollow if I could have left the cob. I’d just walked along to the edge of our grounds, like, to get a bit of fresh air after being all night in the saddle-room, when the policeman and Hobbs hurried by. And putting one thing to another, I thought I’d hold my tongue. And I have done—till now.”

“And at last you thought you’d tell me? Well, you’ve done right,” said Blick. “No harm’ll come to you, Pegge—you’re safe enough.”

“Well, I’d a reason why I come to you tonight,” remarked Pegge, with a sudden shrewd look. “I reckoned up that it was best.”

“Yes? Now, why?” asked Blick.

“Because this here Baron is off tomorrow morning,” replied Pegge. “Leaving!”

“Ah!” exclaimed Blick. “What time?”

“I’ve orders to drive him to Selcaster railway station to catch the 10.8 express to Victoria,” said Pegge. “We shall leave here at half-past nine.”

“There’s a Mrs. Hamilton there at the Dower House, isn’t there?” asked Blick. “A friend of Mrs. Tretheroe’s? Is she leaving, too?”

“No,” answered Pegge. “Just him. I’m driving him in the dogcart. Only him.”

Blick rose from his chair as a sign that the interview was over.

“Very well, Pegge,” he said. “Now then, just remember this—not a word to any living soul! Just go on as if everything was ordinary. You’ll hear from me. You did right to come, and remember what I say—keep all to yourself!”

When the groom had gone, after taking amusing precautions to make sure that no customer of the Sceptre saw him leave the detective’s sitting-room, Blick thought over what he had just heard. There was no doubt in his mind now that the Baron von Eckhardstein was the second man of the midnight meeting at the Sceptre; Pegge’s story, and his own knowledge that von Eckhardstein had abstracted the pipe from the solicitor’s table at the inquest, convinced him of that. But was that sufficient to make one suspect him of murder? Blick thought not—emphatically not. He could scarcely believe it possible that a man would murder another, remain in close proximity to the scene of the murder, and generally act as von Eckhardstein seemed to have acted. Yet—he might know something; probably did, and whether there was sufficient grounds or not for accusing him of actual guilt or complicity, there were certainly plenty for requesting him to give some account of himself. If such a request were suddenly sprung upon him, there might be revelations.

“I’ll have something out of him!” muttered Blick. “Something he must know—and he’ll have to speak!”

With that resolve strong in his mind he sought Grimsdale, ordered breakfast for seven-thirty sharp next morning, and bade the landlord have a cab ready to carry him into Selcaster at eight o’clock.

CHAPTER XIV

These matters arranged and dismissed from his thoughts, Blick, having had enough of business for that night, turned into the bar-parlour of the Sceptre, minded for a little relaxation before retiring to bed. He had been in there once or twice since taking up his quarters at the inn; usually there were two or three Markenmore men to be found round the fire, a farmer or two, the miller, the carpenter, the blacksmith, engaged in discussing the latest news of the village; Blick liked to hear them talk. But on this occasion the room was almost empty; there was in fact, nobody in it but a little, meek-and-mild looking man in a tweed knickerbocker suit, who sat thoughtful and solitary near the hearth, and turned an unusually large pair of spectacles on the detective with a sort of apologetic look. He moved his chair back a little, as if to invite Blick to the cheery blaze.

“Thank you,” said Blick. He dropped into a chair facing the stranger and drew out his pipe and tobacco. “A bit of fire’s quite welcome, though we’re nearly in May,” he opened.

“Very welcome indeed, sir,” responded the other. “Especially when you’ve been out in the open all day!”

“Been walking?” asked Blick, with a glance at the stranger’s knickerbockers.

“I have, sir! Done thirty miles today before I came to this place,” replied the stranger. “Right across the downs. I always take a holiday twice a year—early spring and late autumn—and spend it pedestrianizing. Run all over this particular part of the South in my time. But I never came to this particular village until today. And I confess that what led me here—for in the ordinary way I should have put up at Selcaster—was curiosity! I read in the newspapers about this Markenmore mystery—so being near, I thought I’d like to see the place.”

“Queer business, isn’t it?” said Blick.

“Queer indeed, sir!” agreed the stranger. “You’re interested in it, sir?”

“Got to be,” answered Blick laconically. “Professionally.”

The stranger brought his big spectacles to bear on Blick and regarded him with rapt attention. Then he bent forward and spoke in a hushed voice.

“Is it possible, sir, that I have the pleasure of meeting the famous Detective-Sergeant Blick, whose name I have heard in connection with this case?” he asked almost reverentially. “Do I see Mr. Blick in the flesh?”

“You do!” replied Blick. “All there is of him!”

“Bless me!” exclaimed the stranger. “Very proud, I’m sure, to meet you, sir. My name’s Crawley—I come from Tooting. Rate-collector, Mr. Blick—an arduous and humdrum occupation, sir, but it keeps me in form for walking, of which exercise I’m passionately fond. Dear me! Now, it may seem an extraordinary thing, but do you know, sir, in the course of my five-and-forty years of existence I have never met a gentleman of your profession before! A very exciting and engrossing profession, I believe, sir—quite adventurous?”

“Depends,” said Blick. “Dull and monotonous enough, sometimes. You can, of course, get excitement and adventure out of a problem in mathematics—but there isn’t much of either in doing a long sum of compound addition, is there?”

Mr. Crawley looked his admiration—and his failure to comprehend.

“I mean,” added Blick, “that our job is very often one of adding this to that, and that to this—until you’ve got a total.”

“Very good, sir, very good—I see your meaning!” said Mr. Crawley, rubbing his hands. “Oh, very good indeed, sir—an excellent illumination! It wouldn’t be fair of me, I suppose, to ask if you’ve arrived at a total in this Markenmore problem, Mr. Blick?”

“I can soon answer that for you,” said Blick. “I haven’t!”

“A very stiff nut to crack, I should think, sir,” remarked Mr. Crawley. “I read all the evidence in the paper—theDaily Sentinel, Mr. Blick—as I sat on a hill-side eating my modest lunch: very interesting indeed—more interesting, sir, than any of those sensational novels that people borrow from the libraries—oh, much more! Real life, sir!”

“Make anything out of it?” suggested Blick. “Got any opinion?”

Mr. Crawley glanced at the door and lowered his voice.

“I have opinions, Mr. Blick,” he answered. “Yes, sir, I have opinions. I am not a betting man, sir, but I would lay money that I know what is at the bottom of this affair!”

“Aye? What, now?” asked Blick. “Always glad of an idea.”

“Money!” said Mr. Crawley solemnly. “Money, sir—money!”

“Just—how?” enquired Blick.

Mr. Crawley took off his spectacles, revealed a pair of weak, dreamy eyes, and shook his head.

“I think the unfortunate young man, Mr. Guy Markenmore—queer name, sir!—was followed. Tracked!” he answered. “Tracked, sir! With money at the bottom of it—yes!”

“Do you mean that he was robbed as well as murdered?” asked Blick.

“No, sir—I don’t mean that at all,” said Mr. Crawley with emphatic decision. “I observed that Mr. Guy Markenmore’s property and money were left untouched. No—I mean that money is at the bottom of the mystery of his murder—that he was murdered by some evil person who will benefit by his death—in a pecuniary sense, Mr. Blick, a pecuniary sense. I may be wrong,” concluded Mr. Crawley; “I may be wholly and entirely wrong—but, on the evidence, sir, such is my opinion. And I have served on a jury—more than once.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if there’s a good deal in what you say,” admitted Blick. “There’s generally some question of money at the bottom of all these things. However,” he added, as he pulled out his watch and yawned in the act, “up to now I’ve got precious little light on the subject—perhaps I’ll get a bit more tomorrow.”

Then, with a laughing remark that even detectives must sleep occasionally, he bade Mr. Crawley good night and went off to bed.

Mr. Crawley flung him a last remark as he left the room, accompanied by a wag of his forefinger.

“Don’t forget, Mr. Blick—though a gentleman of your ability and experience needs no reminding of it, I’m sure—don’t forget that it’s always the unexpected that happens! The unexpected, sir!—Ah, there’s a great deal in the unexpected! No one knows, sir, what the morrow may not bring forth!”

“Guess you’re about right there, Mr. Crawley,” asserted Blick. “You’ve hit it in one this time!”

He had no idea of what the morrow would bring forth, neither then, nor when he presently fell fast asleep, nor when he woke in the morning, nor when, at eight o’clock, he climbed up into the trap in which Grimsdale was to drive him into Selcaster. Mr. Crawley, who had also breakfasted early, stood at the Inn door when Blick emerged; he was equipped for walking, and was fastening a small satchel on his shoulders.

“Off?” enquired Blick.

“Only for the day, sir,” replied Mr. Crawley. “I am going to have a full and glorious day on the downs—behold the receptacle of my lunch! And I am so well satisfied with the Sceptre, Mr. Blick, that I propose to make it my headquarters for the rest of my holiday, so I shall perhaps have the pleasure of seeing you tonight, sir—when,” he added in a whisper, “I trust the day may have brought forth!—profitably, eh?”

“You never know your luck!” responded Blick.

He said little to the landlord as they drove into Selcaster, but when they came to the ancient Market Cross in the middle of the old city, he laid a hand on his arm.

“Grimsdale,” he said, “pull up, and set me down here. I’m going to see the Chief Constable—I’ll walk along the street. And listen—I want you to stop in Selcaster a bit. Be down at the station at ten o’clock sharp. I’ll see you there.”

He got out of the trap and went off in the direction of the Chief Constable’s office, and Grimsdale turned into the big courtyard of the Mitre, to wait until the appointed time. At five minutes to ten he went down to the station, and handing over his horse and trap to the care of the boy, walked upon the up platform. The London express was nearly due, and, as usual, there were many passengers awaiting its arrival: the platform was thronged. But Grimsdale was quick to observe that Blick was there, and that near him, mingling with the crowd, were two or three plainclothes policemen of the local force; clearly Blick was expecting somebody. And Grimsdale, a bit of straw protruding from his lips, watched, keen-eyed and observant.

Ten o’clock chimed from the many towers in the city, and nothing had happened. In five minutes more the big express would come thundering in; in eight it would have glided away again on its sixty-mile run to London. At one minute past ten Mr. Blick, who was keeping a sharp watch on the booking-office, left the platform and went outside the station. As he emerged on the open space in front, William Pegge, driving Mrs. Tretheroe’s smart dog-cart, came racing up—alone.

Pegge singled Blick out from the folk who hung about the station doors and pulled up right before him. The detective was at the side of the dog-cart in an instant. His eyes went to the vacant seat at the groom’s side.

“Where is he?” he asked in a sharp whisper.

Pegge bent down.

“Gone!” he answered. “Hooked it during the night! Nobody in his room this morning; clean disappeared! Mrs. Tretheroe sent me in to tell the police—she says something’s happened to him.”

“Happened to him? What does she mean?” growled Blick.

Pegge bent still lower. As he spoke they heard the express coming—it entered the station behind them with a roar and a rattle that died away into the hiss of escaping steam as the engine pulled up and came to its brief rest.

“I heard Mrs. Tretheroe say to the housekeeper that the Baron often went out walking very late at night,” he answered. “She said he’s a bad sleeper, and goes out walking to make himself sleep. I made out that she thought he’d gone out that way during the night, and she believes he’s had an accident, or something of that sort. She’s sending folk round for him, and I’m to tell the police here.”

“Wait a minute,” said Blick. The people who had got out of the express were coming from the exits; he moved out of their way. “You’ve no idea what time he went out?” he asked, glancing at Pegge.

“I’ve no idea,” replied Pegge. “I did hear that he went to bed at his usual time, but——” He paused. Grimsdale had come bustling up and was tapping Blick’s elbow. Blick turned quickly. Grimsdale pointed to a tall man who had just emerged from the station and stood at its principal entrance looking about him.

“There!” said Grimsdale. “That man! That’s him—the man who came to the Sceptre on Monday night—the American!”

At that moment the tall man caught sight of Grimsdale, started, smiled, nodded, and came hastily across.

“Hello, landlord!” he said. “The very man I was waiting to see! Say!—how’s this affair about Guy Markenmore going on? I’ve travelled all night to reach this city so that I could tell about things—never heard of it myself till yesterday evening, right down at Falmouth! Have they laid hands on anybody?”

Grimsdale was looking from the stranger to Blick, and Blick hastened to speak.

“Are you the man with whom Guy Markenmore had supper at the Sceptre last Monday midnight?” he asked abruptly. “The man who booked a room there and never occupied it?”

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