The Chestermarke Instinct

"Wallie, that's awfully clever of you!" exclaimed Betty. "How did you come to think of such an ingenious notion?"

"Worked it out," answered Neale. "This way! Hollis comes down to Scarnham to see Chestermarke's Bank-which means one of the partners. He rings up the bank. He speaks to somebody there. How do we know that somebody was Horbury? We don't! It may have been Mrs. Carswell. Now supposing the real person Hollis wanted to see was either Gabriel or Joseph Chestermarke? Very well-this person who answered from the bank would put Hollis on to either of them at once. Gabriel has a telephone at the Warren: Joseph has a telephone at his home yonder behind us. It may have been with either Gabriel or Joseph that Hollis finished his conversation. And-if it was finished with one of them, it was, in my opinion, whatever that's worth, with Master Joseph!"

"What makes you think that?" asked Betty, startled by the suggestion.

Neale laid a hand on the girl's arm and turned her round to face the town. He lifted his stick and pointed at Joseph Chestermarke's high roof, towering above the houses around it; then he swept the stick towards the river and its course, plainly to be followed, in the direction of the station.

"You see Joseph's house there," he said. "You see the river-the path along its bank-going right down to the meadow opposite the Station Hotel? Very well-now, supposing it was Joseph with whom Hollis wound up that telephone talk, suppose it was Joseph whom Hollis was to see. What would happen? Joseph knew that Hollis was at the Station Hotel. The straightest and easiest way from the Station Hotel to Joseph's house is-straight along the river bank. Now then, call on your memory! What did Mrs. Pratt tell us? 'When I was going back to the bar,' says Mrs. Pratt, 'I heard more. "Along the river-side," says the gentleman. "Straight on from where I am-all right." Then, after a minute, "At seven-thirty, then?" he says. "All right-I'll meet you." And after that,' concludes Mrs. Pratt, 'he rings off.' Now, why shouldn't it be Joseph Chestermarke that he was going to meet?-remember, again, the river-side path leads straight to Joseph's house. Come!-Mrs. Pratt's story doesn't point conclusively to Horbury at all. It's as I say-the telephone conversation may have begun with Horbury, but it may have ended with-somebody else. And what I say is-who was the precise person whom Hollis went to meet?"

"Are you going to tell all that to Starmidge?" asked Betty admiringly. "Because I'm sure it's never entered his head-so far."

"Depends," replied Neale. "Let's see if the tinker has anything to tell. He's at home, anyway. There's his fire."

A spiral of blue smoke, curling high above the green and gold of the gorse bushes, revealed Creasy's whereabouts. He had shifted his camp since their first meeting with him: his tilted cart, his tethered pony, and his fire, were now in a hollow considerably nearer the town. Neale and Betty looked down into his retreat to find him busily mending a collection of pots and pans, evidently gathered up during his round of the previous day. He greeted his visitors with a smile, and fetched a three-legged stool from his cart for Betty's better accommodation.

"Heard anything?" asked Neale, seating himself on a log of wood.

The tinker pointed to several newspapers which lay near at hand, kept from blowing away by a stone placed on the uppermost.

"Only what's in these," he answered. "I've read all that-so I'm pretty well posted up, mister. I've just read this morning's-bought it in the town when I went to fetch some bread. Queer affair altogether, I call it!"

"Have you looked round about at all?" asked Betty.

"I've been a good bit over the Hollow, miss," answered Creasy. "But it's a stiff job seeking anything here. There's nobody knows what a wilderness this Hollow is until they begin exploring it. Holes-corners-nooks-crannies-bracken and bushes-it is a wilderness, and that's a fact! I'd engage to hide myself safely in this square mile for many a week, against a hundred seekers. It wouldn't a bit surprise me, you know, if it comes out in the end that Mr. Horbury, after all, did fall down one of these old shafts. I couldn't believe it possible at first, knowing that he knew every in and out of the place, but I'm beginning to think he may have done. There's only one thing against that theory."

"What?" asked Betty.

"Where's the other gentleman?" answered the tinker. "If they came together on to this waste, one couldn't fall down a shaft without the other knowing it, eh? And it's scarcely likely they'd both fall down."

Neale glanced at Betty and shook his head.

"There you are, you see!" he muttered. "They all hang to the notion that Hollis did meet Horbury! Mr. Horbury may have been alone, after all, you know," he went on, turning to Creasy. "There's no proof that the other gentleman was with him."

"Aye, well-I'm going on what these paper accounts say," answered Creasy. "They all take it for granted that those two were together. Well, about these old shaftings, mister-I did notice something very early this morning that I thought might be looked into."

"What is it?" asked Neale. "Don't let's lose any chance of finding anything out, however small it may be."

The tinker finished mending a kettle and set it aside amongst other renovated articles. He lifted the pan of solder off the fire, set it aside, too, and got up.

"Come this way, then," he said. "I was going in to Scarnham this noon to tell Mr Polke about it, but as long as you're here-"

He led the way through the thick gorse and heather until he came to a narrow track which wound across the moor in the direction of the town. There he paused, pointing towards Ellersdeane on the one hand, towards Scarnham on the other.

"You see this track, mister?" he said. "You'll notice that it goes to Ellersdeane village that way, and to Scarnham this. Of course, you can't see it all the way in either direction, but you can take my word for it-it does. It comes out at Ellersdeane by the duck-pond, at Scarnham by the bridge at the foot of Cornmarket. People who know it would follow it if they wanted a short cut across the moor from the town to the village-or the opposite, as you might say. Now then, look here-a bit this way."

He preceded them along the narrow track until, on an open space in the moorland, they came to one of the old lead-mine shafts, the mouth of which had been fenced in by a roughly built wall of stone gathered from its immediate surroundings. In this wall, extending from its parapet to the ground, was a wide gap: the stones which had been displaced to make it had disappeared into the cavernous opening.

"Now then!" said the tinker, turning on his companions with the inquiring look of a man who advances a theory which may or may not be accepted as reasonable, "you see that? What I'd like to know is-is that a recently made gap? It's difficult to tell. If this bit of a stone fence had been built with mortar, one could have told. But it's never had mortar or lime in it!-it's just rough masonry, as you see-stones picked up off the moor, like all these fences round the old shafts. But-there's the gap right enough! Do you know what I'm thinking?"

"No!" murmured Betty, with a glance of fear and doubt at the black vista which she saw through the gap. "But-don't be afraid to speak."

"I'm thinking this," continued the tinker: "Supposing a man was following this track from Ellersdeane to Scarnham, or t'other way about, as it might be-supposing he was curious to look down one of these old shafts-supposing he looked down this one, which stands, as you see, not two yards off the very track he was following-supposing he leaned his weight on this rotten bit of fencing-supposing it gave way? What?"

Neale, who had been listening intently, made a movement as if to lay his hand on the grey stones. Betty seized him impulsively.