The Chestermarke Instinct

"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 every-thing, 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, raining 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.

Starmidge turned up Cordmaker's Alley, regained the Market-Place, and strolled on to Polke's private house. The superintendent was taking his ease after his day's labours and reading the Ecclesborough evening newspapers: he tossed one of them over to his visitor.

"All there!" he said, pointing to some big headlines. "Got it all in, just as you told it to Parkinson. Full justice to the descriptions of both Horbury and the Station Hotel stranger. Smart work, eh?"

"Power of the Press – as Parkinson said," answered Starmidge, with a laugh. "It's very useful, the Press: I don't know how they managed without it in the old days of criminal catching, Mr. Polke. Press and telegraph, eh? – they're valuable adjuncts."

"You think all that would be in the London papers this evening?" asked Polke.

"Sure to be," replied Starmidge. "I'm hoping we'll hear something from London tomorrow. I say – I've been taking a bit of a look round one or two places tonight, quietly, you know. What's that curious building in Joseph Chestermarke's garden?"

Polke put down his paper and looked unusually interested.

"I don't know!" he answered. "How did you see it? I've never seen inside his garden."

"Climbed a tree on the river-bank and looked over the wall," replied Starmidge.

"Well," said Polke, "I did hear, some few years ago, that he was building something in that garden, but the work was done by Ecclesborough contractors, and nobody ever knew much about it here. I believe Joseph's a bit of an amateur experimenter – but I don't know what he experiments in. Nobody ever goes inside his house – he's a hermit."

"He's got some sort of a forge there, anyhow," said Starmidge. "Or a furnace, or something of that sort."

Then they talked of other things until half-past ten, when the detective retired to his inn and went to bed. He was sleeping soundly when a steady knocking at his door roused him, to hear the voice of his landlady outside. And at the same time he heard the big clock of the parish church striking midnight.

"Mr. Starmidge!" said the voice, "there's a policeman wanting you. Will you go round at once to Mr. Polke's? There's a man come from London about that piece in the newspapers."

CHAPTER XV

MR. FREDERICK HOLLIS

Starmidge hastily pulled some garments about him, and flinging a travelling-coat over his shoulders, hurried downstairs, to find a sleepy-looking policeman in the hall.

"How did this man get here – at this time of night?" he asked, as they set off towards the police-station.

"Came in a taxi-cab from Ecclesborough," answered the policeman. "I haven't heard any particulars, Mr. Starmidge, except that he'd read the news in the London paper this evening and set off here in consequence. He's in Mr. Polke's house, sir."

Starmidge walked into the superintendent's parlour, to find him in company with a young man, whom the detective at once sized up as a typical London clerk – a second glance assured him that his clerkship was of the legal variety.

"Here's Detective-Sergeant Starmidge," said Polke. "Starmidge, this gentleman's Mr. Simmons, from London. Mr. Simmons says he's clerk to a Mr. Hollis, a London solicitor. And, having read that description in the papers this last evening, he's certain that the man who came to the Station Hotel here on Saturday is his governor."

Starmidge sat down and looked again at the visitor – a tall, sandy-haired, freckled young man, who was obviously a good deal puzzled.

"Is Mr. Hollis missing, then?" asked Starmidge.

Simmons looked as if he found it somewhat difficult to explain matters.

"Well," he answered. "It's this way. I've never seen him since Saturday. And he hasn't been at his rooms – his private rooms – since Saturday. In the ordinary course he ought to have been at business first thing yesterday – we'd some very important business on yesterday morning, which wasn't done because of his absence. He never turned up yesterday at all – nor today either – we never heard from or of him. And so, when I read that description in the papers this evening, I caught the first express I could get down here – at least to Ecclesborough – I had to motor from there."

"That description describes Mr. Hollis, then?" asked Starmidge.

"Exactly! I'm sure it's Mr. Hollis – it's him to a T!" answered the clerk. "I recognized it at once."

"Let's get everything in order," said Starmidge, with a glance at Polke. "To begin with, who is Mr. Hollis?"

"Mr. Frederick Hollis, solicitor, 59b South Square, Gray's Inn," replied Simmons promptly. "Andwell & Hollis is the name of the firm – but there isn't any Andwell – hasn't been for many a year – he's dead, long since, is Andwell. Mr. Hollis is the only proprietor."

"Don't know him at all," remarked Starmidge. "What's his particular line of practice?"

"Conveyancing," said Simmons.

"Then, naturally, I shouldn't," observed Starmidge. "My acquaintance is chiefly with police-court solicitors. And you say he'd private rooms some where? Where, now?"

"Paper Buildings, Temple," replied the clerk. "He'd a suite of rooms there – he's had 'em for years."

"Bachelor, then?" inquired the detective.

"Yes – he's a bachelor," agreed Simmons.

"You know he hasn't been at his rooms since Saturday – you've ascertained that?" continued Starmidge.

"He's never been at his rooms since he left them after breakfast on Saturday morning," replied Simmons. "I went there at eleven o'clock Monday – that was yesterday – again at four: twice on Tuesday. I was coming away from the Temple when I got the paper and read about this affair."

"When did you see him last?" asked Starmidge.

"Half-past-twelve Saturday. He went out – dressed just as it says in your description. And," concluded the clerk, with a shake of his head which suggested his own inability to understand matters, "he never said a word to me about coming down here."

"Did he say anything to anybody at his rooms about going away? – for the week-end, for instance?" asked the detective. "There'd be somebody there, of course."

"Only a woman who tidied up for him and got his breakfast ready of a morning," said Simmons. "He took all his other meals out. No – he said nothing to her. But he wasn't a week-ender: he very rarely left his rooms except for the office."

"Any of his relations been after him?" inquired Starmidge.

"I don't know anything about his relations – nor friends, either," answered the clerk. "Don't even know the address of one of them, or I'd have gone to seek him on Monday – everything's at a standstill. He was a lonely sort of man – I never heard of his relations or friends."

"How long have you been with him, then?" asked the detective. "Some time?"

"Six years," replied Simmons.

"And you've no doubt, from the description in the papers, that the gentleman who came here on Saturday last is Mr. Hollis?" asked Starmidge.

The clerk shook his head with an air of conviction.

"None!" he answered. "None whatever!"

Starmidge helped himself to a cigar out of an open box which lay on Polke's table. He lighted it carefully, and smoked for a minute or two in silence. Then he looked at Polke.

"Well, there's a very obvious question to put to Mr. Simmons after all that," he remarked. "Have you any idea," he continued, turning to the clerk, "of any reason that would bring Mr. Hollis to Scarnham?"

Simmons shook his head more vigorously than before.

"Not the ghost of an idea!" he exclaimed.

"There was no business being done with anybody at Scarnham?" asked Starmidge.

"Not in our office!" asserted Simmons. "I'm sure of that. I know all the business that we have in hand. To tell you the truth, gentlemen, though you may think me very ignorant, I never even heard of Scarnham myself until I read the paper this evening."