“Very good of your lordship,” said Gabriel, with the faintest suggestion of a smile. “But — a man’s honesty is bounded by his necessity. We, of course, are better acquainted with our late manager’s qualities — now.”

  “You have discovered — something?” asked the Earl anxiously.

  “Up to now,” replied Gabriel, “we have kept things to ourselves. But we don’t mind giving your lordship a little — just a little — information. There is no doubt that Horbury had, for some time past, engaged in speculation in stocks and shares — none whatever!”

  “To a considerable extent,” added Joseph.

  “And — unsuccessfully?” inquired the Earl.

  “We are not yet quite sure of the details,” answered Gabriel. “The mere fact is enough. Of course, no man in his position has any right to speculate. Had we known that he speculated — —”

  “He would have been discharged from our service,” said Joseph. “No banker can retain the services of a manager who — gambles.”

  The Earl began to feel almost as uncomfortable as if these two men were charging him with improper transactions. He was a man of simple mind and ideas, and he supposed the Chestermarkes knew what they were talking about.

  “Then you think that this sudden disappearance — —” he said.

  “In the history of banking — unwritten, possibly,” remarked Joseph, “there are many similar instances. No end of them, most likely. Bank managers enjoy vast opportunities of stealing, my lord! And the man who is best trusted has more opportunities than the man who’s watched. We never suspected — and so we never watched.”

  “You have heard of the stranger who came to the town on Saturday night, and is believed to have telephoned from the Station Hotel to Horbury?” asked the Earl. “What of him?”

  “We have heard,” answered Gabriel. “We don’t know any more. We don’t know any such person — from the description. But we have no doubt he did meet Horbury — and that his visit had something — probably everything — to do with Horbury’s disappearance.”

  “But how could he disappear?” asked the Earl. “I mean to say — how could such a well-known man disappear so completely, without anybody knowing of it? It seems impossible!”

  “If your lordship will think for a moment,” said Joseph, “you will see that it is not merely not impossible, but very easy. Horbury was a great pedestrian — he used to boast of his thirty and forty mile walks. Now we are well within twenty miles of Ecclesborough. Ecclesborough is a very big town. What was there to prevent Horbury, during Saturday night, from walking across country to Ecclesborough? Nothing! If, after interviewing that strange man, he decided to clear out at once, he’d nothing to do but set off — over a very lonely stretch of country, every inch of which he knew — to Ecclesborough: he would be in Ecclesborough by an early hour in the morning. Now in Ecclesborough there are three stations — big stations. He could get away from any one of them — what booking-clerk or railway official would pay any particular attention to him? The thing is — ridiculously easy!”

  “What of the other man?” asked the Earl. “If there were two men — together — at an early hour — eh?”

  “They need not have caught a train at a very early hour,” replied Joseph. “They need not have been together when they caught any train. I don’t say they went together — I don’t say they went to Ecclesborough — I don’t say they caught a train: I only say what, it must be obvious, they easily could do without attracting attention.”

  “The fact of Horbury’s disappearance is — unchallengeable,” remarked Gabriel quietly. “We — know why he disappeared.”

  “I should think,” said Joseph, still more quietly, “that Lord Ellersdeane also knows — by now.”

  “No, I don’t!” exclaimed the Earl, a little sharply. “I wish I did!”

  Joseph pointed to the casket.

  “Why have the police been officially — and officiously — searching the house, then?” he asked.

  “To see if they could get any clue to his disappearance,” replied the Earl.

  “And they found — that!” retorted Joseph.

  “In the housekeeper’s room,” said the Earl. “She may have appropriated the jewels.”

  “I think your lordship must see that that is very unlikely — without collusion between Horbury and herself,” remarked Gabriel.

  “Mrs. Carswell,” said Joseph, “has always been more or less of a mysterious person. We know nothing about her. I don’t even know where Horbury got her from. But — the probability is that they were in collusion, and that when he went, she stayed behind, to ascertain how things turned out on his disappearance; and that she fled when it began to appear that searching inquiries were to be made into which she might be drawn.”

  The Earl made no reply. He recognized that the Chestermarke observations and suggestions were rather more than plausible, and much as he fought against the idea of the missing manager’s dishonesty, he could not deny that the circumstances as set forth by the bankers were suspicious.

  “Your lordship will, of course, follow up this woman?” said Gabriel, after a brief silence.

  “I suppose the police will,” replied the Earl. “But — aren’t you going to do anything yourselves, Mr. Chestermarke? You told me, you know, that certain securities of yours were missing.”

  Gabriel glanced at his nephew — and Joseph nodded.

  “Oh, well!” answered Gabriel. “We don’t mind telling your lordship — and if your lordship pleases, you may tell the police — we are doing something. We have, in fact, been doing something from an early hour. We have a very clever man at work just now — he has been at work since he heard from us twenty-four hours ago. But — our ideas are not those of Polke. Polke begins his inquiries here. Our inquiries — based on our knowledge — begin ... elsewhere.”

  “You think Horbury will be heard of — elsewhere?” suggested the Earl.

  “Much more likely to be heard of elsewhere than here, my lord!” asserted Gabriel.

  “But, of course, what we do need not interfere with anything that your lordship does, or that Miss Fosdyke does, or that the police do.”

  “All that any of us want, I suppose, is to find Horbury,” said the Earl, as he rose. “If he’s found, then, I conclude, some explanation will result. You don’t believe in searching about here, then?”

  “Let Polke and his men have their way, my lord,” replied Gabriel, with a wave of his hand. “My impression of police methods is that those who follow them can only follow that particular path. We are not looking for Horbury — here. He’s — elsewhere.”

  “So, by this time, are your lordship’s jewels,” added Joseph significantly. “They, one may be sure, are not going to be found in or about Scarnham.”

  The Earl said good-day and went out, troubled and wondering. In the hall he met the search-party. Mr. Batterley had failed to find anything in the way of secret stairs or passages or openings beyond those already known to the occupants, and though he was still confident that they existed, the police had wound up their present investigations to turn to more palpable things. Polke and the detective listened to the Earl’s account of his interview, and the superintendent sniffed at the mention of the inquiries instituted by the partners.

  “Ah!” he said incredulously. “Just so! Private inquiry agent, no doubt. All right — let ’em do what they like. But we’re going to do what we like, my lord, and what we do will be on very different lines. First thing now — we want that woman!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE MIDNIGHT SUMMONS

  THE SEARCH-PARTY SEPARATED outside the bank, not too well satisfied with the result of its labours. The old antiquary walked away obviously nettled that he was not allowed to pursue his investigations further; Betty Fosdyke and the solicitor went across to the hotel in deep conference; the Earl accompanied Starmidge and Polke to the police-station. And there the detective laid down a firm outline of the next immediate procedure. It was of no use to half-do things, he said — they must rouse wholesale attention. Once more the press must be made use of — the sudden disappearance of Mrs. Carswell must be noised abroad in the next morning’s papers. A police notice describing her must be got out and sent all over the kingdom. And — last, but certainly not least — Lord Ellersdeane must offer a substantial reward for the recovery of, or news of, his missing property. Let the Chestermarkes adopt their own method — if they had any — of finding the alleged absconding manager; he, Starmidge, preferred to solve these mysteries by ways of his own.

  It was growing near to dusk when all their necessary arrangements had been made, and Starmidge was free to seek his long-delayed dinner. He had put himself up, of his own choice, at a quiet and old-fashioned inn near the police-station, where he had engaged a couple of rooms and found a landlady to his liking. He repaired to this retreat now, and ate and drank in quiet, and smoked a peaceful pipe afterwards, and was glad of a period of rest. But as he took his ease, he thought and pondered, and by the time that evening had fairly settled over the little town, he went out into the streets and sought the ancient corner of Scarnham which was called Cornmarket.

  Starmidge wanted to take a look at the house in which Joseph Chestermarke spent his bachelor existence. Since his own arrival in the town, he had been learning all he could about the two Chestermarkes, and he was puzzled about them. For a man who was still young, Starmidge had seen a good deal of the queer side of life, and had known a good many strange people, but so far he had never come across two such apparently curious characters as the uncle and nephew who ran the old-fashioned bank. Their evident indifference to public opinion puzzled him. He could not understand their ice-cold defiance of what he himself called law. He never remembered being treated as they had treated him. For Starmidge, when on duty, considered himself as much the representative of Justice as any ermined and coifed judge could be, and he had been accustomed — so far — to attentive and respectful consideration. But neither Gabriel nor Joseph Chestermarke appeared to have any proper appreciation of the dignity of a detective-sergeant of the Criminal Investigation Department, and their eyes had regarded him as if he were something very inferior indeed. Starmidge, though by no means a vain man, felt nettled by such treatment, and he accordingly formed something very like a prejudice against the two partners. That prejudice was quickly followed by suspicion — especially in the case of Joseph Chestermarke. According to Starmidge’s ideas, the bankers, if they really believed Horbury to have absconded, if certain securities of theirs really were missing, if they really thought that Horbury had carried them off, and the Countess of Ellersdeane’s jewels with him, ought to have placed every information in their power at the disposal of the police: it was suspicious, and strange, and not at all proper, that they didn’t. And it was suspicious, too, that the housekeeper, Mrs. Carswell, should take herself off after a brief exchange of words with Joseph. It looked very much as if the junior partner had either warned her to go, or had told her to go. Why had she gone then? — when she might have gone before. And why in such haste? Clearly, considering everything, there were grounds for believing that there was some secret between Mrs. Carswell and Joseph Chestermarke.

  Anyway, rightly or wrongly, Starmidge was suspicious of the junior partner in Chestermarke’s Bank, and he wanted to know everything that he could find out about him. He had already learnt that Joseph, like his uncle, was a confirmed bachelor, and lived in an old house at the corner of Cornmarket, somewhat — so far as the town-folk could judge — after the fashion of a hermit. Starmidge would have given a good deal for a really good excuse to call on Joseph Chestermarke at that house, so that he might see the inside of it: indeed, if he had only met with a better reception at the bank, he would have invented such an excuse. But if Gabriel was icily stand-offish, Joseph was openly sneering and contemptuous, and the detective knew that no excuse would give him admittance. Still, there was the outside: he would take a look at that. Starmidge was a young man of ideas as well as of ability, and without exactly shaping his thought in so many words, he felt — vaguely perhaps, but none the less strongly — that just as you can size up some men by the clothes they wear, so you can get an idea of others by the outer look of the houses which shelter them.

  Cornmarket in Scarnham lay at the further end of the street called Finkleway. It was a queer, open space which sloped downhill from the centre of the ridge on which the middle of the town was built to the valley through which the little river meandered. Save where the streets, and the road leading out to the open country and Ellersdeane cut into it, it was completely enclosed by old houses of the sort which Starmidge had already admired in the Market-Place: many of them half-timbered, all of them very ancient. One or two of them were inns; some were evidently workmen’s cottages; others were better-class dwelling-houses. From the description already furnished to him by Polke, Starmidge at once recognized Joseph Chestermarke’s abode. It was a corner house, abutting on the road which ran out at the lower angle of this irregular space and led down to the river and Scarnham Bridge. It was by far the biggest house thereabouts — a tall, slender, stone-built house of many stories, towering high above any of the surrounding gables. And save for a very faint, dull glow which shone through the transom window of the front door, there was not a vestige of light in a single window of the seven stories. Cornmarket was a gloomy commonplace, thought Starmidge, but the little oil lamps in the cottages were riotously cheery in comparison with the darkness of the tall, gaunt Chestermarke mansion. It looked like the abode of dead men.

  Starmidge longed to knock at that door — if only to get a peep inside the hall. But he curbed his desires and went quietly round the corner of the house. There was a high black wall there which led down to the grassy bank of the river. From its corner another wall ran along the river-side, separated from the stream by a path. There was a door set in this wall, and Starmidge, after carefully looking round in the gloom, quietly tried it and found it securely locked.

  An intense desire to see the inside of Joseph Chestermarke’s garden seized the detective. Near the door, partly overhanging the garden wall, partly overshadowing the path and the river-bank, was a tree: Starmidge, after listening carefully and deciding that no one was coming along the path, made shift to climb that tree, just then bursting into full leaf. In another minute he was amongst its middle branches, and peering inquisitively into the garden which lay between him and the gaunt outline of the gloom-stricken house.

  The moon was just then rising above the roofs and gables of the town, and by its rapidly increasing light Starmidge saw that the garden was of considerable size, running back quite sixty yards from the rear of the house, and having a corresponding breadth. Like all the gardens which stretched from the backs of the Market-Place houses to the river-bank, it was rich in trees — high elms and beeches rose from its lawns, and made deep shadows across them. But Starmidge was not so much interested in those trees, fine as they were, as in a building; obviously modern, which was set in their midst, completely isolated. That it was a comparatively new building he could see; the moonbeams falling full on it showed that the stone of which it was built was fresh and unstained by time or smoke. But what was it? Of what nature, for what purpose? It was neither stable, nor coach-house, nor summer-house, nor a grouping of domestic offices. No drive or path led to it: it was built in the middle of a grass-plot: round it ran a stone-lined trench. Its architecture was plain but handsome; it possessed two distinctive features which the detective was quick to notice. One, was that — at any rate on the two sides which he could see — its windows were set at a height of quite twelve feet from the ground: the other, that from its flat parapeted roof rose a conical structure something like the rounded stacks of glass foundries and potteries. This was obviously a chimney, and from its mouth at that moment was emerging a slight column of smoke which threw back curiously coloured reflections, blue, and yellow, and red, to the moonlight which fell on its thickening spirals.

  Starmidge felt just as much desire to get inside this queer structure as into the house behind it, and if he could have seen any prospect of taking a peep through its windows he would have risked detection and dropped from his perch into the garden. But he judged that if the windows were twelve feet from the ground on the two sides of the building which he could see, they would be the same height on the sides which he couldn’t see; moreover, he observed that they were obscured by either dull red glass or red curtains. Clearly no outsider was intended to get a peep into this temple of mystery. What was it? What went on within it? He was about to climb down from the tree when he got some sort of an answer to these questions. From within the building, muffled by the evidently thick walls, came the faintest sound of metal beating on metal — a mere rippling, tinkling sound, light and musical, such as might have been made by fairy blacksmiths beating on a fairy anvil. But far away as it sounded, it was clear and unmistakable.

  Starmidge regained the path between the wall and the river and went slowly forward. The place, he decided, was evidently some sort of a workshop, in which was a forge: probably Joseph Chestermarke amused himself with a little amateur work in metals. He thought no more of the matter just then; he wanted to explore the river-bank along which he now walked. For according to the story of the landlady of the Station Hotel, it was on that river-bank that the mysterious stranger was to meet whoever it was that he spoke to over the telephone, and so far Starmidge had not had an opportunity of examining its geography.

  There was not much to examine. The river, a mere ditch, eight or ten yards in breadth, wandered through a level mead at the base of the valley, separated from the gardens by a wide path. Between Scarnham Bridge, at the foot of Cornmarket and the corner of Joseph Chestermarke’s big garden, and the end of Cordmaker’s Alley, a narrow street which ran down from the further end of the Market-Place to the river-side, there were no features of any note or interest. On the other side of the river lay the deep woods through which Neale and Betty Fosdyke had passed on their way to Ellersdeane Hollow: Starmidge had heard all about that expedition, and he glanced curiously at the black depths of the trees, wondering if John Horbury and the mysterious stranger, supposing they had met, had turned into these woods to hold their conference. He presently came to the foot-bridge by which access to the woods and the other bank of the river was gained, and by it he lingered for a moment or two, looking at it in its bearings to the bank-house garden and orchard on his left hand, and to the Station Hotel, the lights of which he could plainly see down the valley. Certainly, if John Horbury and the stranger desired to meet in secret, here was the place. The stranger had nothing to do but stroll along the river-bank from the hotel; Horbury had only to step out of his orchard and meet him. Once together, they had only to cross that foot-bridge into the woods to be immediately in surroundings of great privacy.

 

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