The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman
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in the first place,” replied Thorndyke. “I will consider the case and let you have a reasoned report in a day or two, which you can show to the Foreign Office and also to the insurance company.”
Mr. Pedley looked as if he would have liked to ask some further questions, but as Thorndyke now made his way to the door, he followed in silence, pocketing the keys as we went out. He accompanied us down to the entry and there we left him, setting forth in the direction of South Kensington Station.
“It looked to me,” said I, as soon as we were out of ear-shot, “as if that lock had been forced. What do you think?”
“Well,” he answered, “locks get broken in ordinary use, but taking all the facts together, I think you are right. There are too many coincidences for reasonable probability. First, this man leaves his keys, including his latchkey, on the table, which is an extraordinary thing to do. On that very occasion, he is found dead under inexplicable circumstances. Then, of all the locks in his rooms, the one which happens to be broken is the one of which the key is not on the bunch. That is a very suspicious group of facts.”
It is,” I agreed. “And if there is, as you say—though I can’t imagine on what grounds—evidence of foul play, that makes it still more suspicious. But what is the next move? Have you anything in view?”
“The next move,” he replied, “is to clear up the mystery of the dead man’s movements on the day of his death. The railway receipt shows that on that day be travelled down somewhere into Essex. From that place, he took a long, cross-country journey of which the destination was a ditch by a lonely meadow in Buckinghamshire. The questions that we have to answer are, What was he doing in Essex? Why did he make that strange journey? Did he make it alone? and, if not, Who accompanied him?
“Now, obviously, the first thing to do is to locate that place in Essex; and when we have done that, to go down there and see if we can pick up any traces of the dead man.”
“That sounds like a pretty vague quest,” said I; “but if we fail, the police may be able to find out some thing. By the way, we want a new Bradshaw.”
“An excellent suggestion, Jervis,” said he. “I will get one as we go into the station.”
A few minutes later, as we sat on a bench waiting for our train, he passed to me the open copy of Bradshaw, with the crumpled railway receipt.
“You see,” said he, “it was apparently ‘G.B.Hlt.,’ and the fare from London was four and ninepence. Here is Great Buntingfield Halt, the fare to which is four and ninepence. That must be the place. At any rate, we will give it a trial. May I take it that you are coming to lend a hand? I shall start in good time to morrow morning.”
I assented emphatically. Never had I been more completely in the dark than I was in this case, and seldom had I known Thorndyke to be more positive and confident. Obviously, he had something up his sleeve; and I was racked with curiosity as to what that some thing was.
On the following morning we made a fairly early start, and half-past ten found us seated in the train, looking out across a dreary waste of marshes, with the estuary of the Thames a mile or so distant. For the first time in my recollection Thorndyke had come unprovided with his inevitable “research case,” but I noted that he had furnished himself with a botanist’s vasculum—or tin collecting-case—and that his pocket bulged as if he had some other appliances concealed about his person. Also that he carried a walking-stick that was strange to me.
“This will be our destination, I think,” he said, as the train slowed down; and sure enough it presently came to rest beside a little makeshift platform on which was displayed the name “Great Buntingfield Halt.” We were the only passengers to alight, and the guard, having noted the fact, blew his whistle and dismissed the little station with a contemptuous wave of his flag.
Thorndyke lingered on the platform after the train had gone, taking a general survey of the country. Half a mile away to the north a small village was visible; while to the south the marshes stretched away to the river, their bare expanse unbroken save by a solitary building whose unredeemed hideousness proclaimed it a factory of some kind. Presently the station-master approached deferentially, and as we proffered our tickets, Thorndyke remarked: “You don’t seem overburdened with traffic here.”
“No, sir. You’re right,” was the emphatic reply. ’Tis a dead-alive place. Excepting the people at the Golomite Works and one now and then from the village, no one uses the halt. You’re the first strangers I’ve seen for more than a month.”
“Indeed,” said Thorndyke. “But I think you are forgetting one. An acquaintance of mine came here last Tuesday—and by the same token, he hadn’t got a ticket and had to pay his fare.”
“Oh, I remember,” the station-master replied. “You mean a gentleman with a scar on his cheek. But I don’t count him as a stranger. He has been here before; I think he is connected with the works, as he always goes up their road.”
“Do you happen to remember what time he came back?” Thorndyke asked.
“He didn’t come back at all,” was the reply. “I am sure of that, because I work the halt and level crossing by myself. I remember thinking it queer that he didn’t come back, because the ticket that he had lost was a return. He must have gone back in the van belonging to the works—that one that you see coming towards the crossing.”
As he spoke, he pointed to a van that was approaching down the factory road—a small covered van with the name “Golomite Works” painted, not on the cover, but on a board that was attached to it. The station-master walked towards the crossing to open the gates, and we followed; and when the van had passed, Thorndyke wished our friend “Good morning,” and led the way along the road, looking about him with lively interest and rather with the air of one looking for something in particular.
We had covered about two-thirds of the distance to the factory when the road approached a wide ditch; and from the attention with which my friend regarded it, I suspected that this was the something for which he had been looking. It was, however, quite unapproachable, for it was bordered by a wide expanse of soft mud thickly covered with rushes and trodden deeply by cattle. Nevertheless, Thorndyke followed its margin, still looking about him keenly, until, about a couple of hundred yards from the factory, I observed a small decayed wooden staging or quay, apparently the remains of a vanished footbridge. Here Thorndyke halted and unbuttoning his coat, began to empty out his pockets, producing first the vasculum, then a small case containing three wide-mouthed bottles—both of which he deposited on the ground—and finally a sort of miniature landing-net, which he proceeded to screw on to the ferrule of his stick.
“I take it,” said I, “that these proceedings are a blind to cover some sort of observations.”
“Not at all,” he replied. “We are engaged in the study of pond and ditch natural history, and a most fascinating and instructive study it is. The variety of forms is endless. This ditch, you observe, like the one at Bantree, is covered with a dense growth of duck-weed: but whereas that ditch was swarming with succinea here there is not a single succinea to be seen.”
I grunted a sulky assent, and watched suspiciously as he filled the bottles with water from the ditch and then made a preliminary sweep with his net.
“Here is a trial sample,” said he, holding the loaded net towards me. “Duck-weed, horn-weed, Planorbis nautileus, but no succinea. What do you think of it, Jervis?”
I looked distastefully at the repulsive mess, but yet with attention, for I realised that there was a meaning in his question. And then, suddenly, my attention sharpened. I picked out of the net a strand of dark green, plumy weed and examined it. “So this is horn-weed,” I said. “Then it was a piece of horn-weed that Cyrus Pedley held grasped in his hand; and now I come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing any horn-weed in the ditch at Bantree.”
He nodded approvingly. “There wasn’t any,” said he.
“And these little ammonite-like shells are just like those that I noticed at the bottom of Dr. Parton’s