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Ravensdene Court

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Title: Ravensdene Court

Author: J. S. Fletcher


        
Release date: August 15, 2008 [eBook #26324]
                Most recently updated: July 17, 2013

Language: English

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Credits: E-text prepared by Sankar Viswanathan, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAVENSDENE COURT ***


E-text prepared by Sankar Viswanathan, Suzanne Shell, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



RAVENSDENE COURT

by

J. S. FLETCHER







New York
Alfred A. Knopf
MCMXXII

Copyright, 1922, by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Published July, 1922





CONTENTS


I     THE INN ON THE CLIFF               9

II    RAVENSDENE COURT                  21

III   THE MORNING TIDE                  34

IV    THE TOBACCO BOX                   46

V     THE NEWS FROM DEVONPORT           58

VI    SECRET THEFT                      71

VII   YELLOWFACE                        84

VIII  WAS IT A WOMAN?                   96

IX    THE ENLARGED PHOTOGRAPH          108

X     THE YELLOW SEA                   120

XI    THE FIVE CONCLUSIONS             133

XII   NETHERFIELD BAXTER               145

XIII  THE SPOILS OF SACRILEGE          157

XIV   SOLOMON FISH                     169

XV    MR. JALLANBY--SHIP BROKER        181

XVI   THE PATHLESS WOOD                193

XVII  HUMFREY DE KNAYTHVILLE           206

XVIII THE PLUM CAKE                    218

XIX   BLACK MEMORIES                   230

XX    THE POSSIBLE REASON              242

XXI   THE CHINESE GENTLEMAN            254

XXII  RED DAWN                         267

XXIII THE FOURTH CHINAMAN              279

XXIV  THE SILK CAP                     291

XXV   CLEAR DECKS                      304





RAVENSDENE COURT

CHAPTER I

THE INN ON THE CLIFF


According to an entry in my book of engagements, I left London for
Ravensdene Court on March 8th, 1912. Until about a fortnight earlier I
had never heard of the place, but there was nothing remarkable in my
ignorance of it, seeing that it stands on a remote part of the
Northumbrian coast, and at least three hundred miles from my usual
haunts. But then, towards the end of February, I received the
following letter which I may as well print in full: it serves as a
fitting and an explanatory introduction to a series of adventures, so
extraordinary, mysterious, and fraught with danger, that I am still
wondering how I, until then a man of peaceful and even dull life, ever
came safely through them.

                           "RAVENSDENE COURT, NEAR ALNWICK
                                         NORTHUMBERLAND
                                       February 24, 1912

     "_Dear Sir_,

     "I am told by my friend Mr. Gervase Witherby of Monks
     Welborough, with whom I understand you to be well
     acquainted, that you are one of our leading experts in
     matters relating to old books, documents, and the like, and
     the very man to inspect, value, and generally criticize the
     contents of an ancient library. Accordingly, I should be
     very glad to secure your valuable services. I have recently
     entered into possession of this place, a very old
     manor-house on the Northumbrian coast, wherein the senior
     branch of my family has been settled for some four hundred
     years. There are here many thousands of volumes, the
     majority of considerable age; there are also large
     collections of pamphlets, manuscripts, and broadsheets--my
     immediate predecessor, my uncle, John Christopher Raven, was
     a great collector; but, from what I have seen of his
     collection up to now, I cannot say that he was a great
     exponent of the art of order, or a devotee of system, for an
     entire wing on this house is neither more nor less than a
     museum, into which books, papers, antiques, and similar
     things appear to have been dumped without regard to
     classification or arrangement. I am not a bookman, nor an
     antiquary; my life until recently has been spent in far
     different fashion, as a Financial Commissioner in India. I
     am, however, sincerely anxious that these new possessions of
     mine should be properly cared for, and I should like an
     expert to examine everything that is here, and to advise me
     as to proper arrangement and provision for the future. I
     should accordingly be greatly obliged to you if you could
     make it convenient to come here as my guest, give me the
     benefit of your expert knowledge, and charge me whatever fee
     seems good to you. I cannot promise you anything very lively
     in the way of amusement in your hours of relaxation, for
     this is a lonely place, and my family consists of nothing
     but myself and my niece, a girl of nineteen, just released
     from the schoolroom; but you may find some more congenial
     society in another guest of mine, Mr. Septimus Cazalette,
     the eminent authority on numismatics, who is here for the
     purpose of examining the vast collection of coins and medals
     formed by the kinsman I have just referred to. I can also
     promise you the advantages of a particularly bracing
     climate, and assure you of a warm welcome and every possible
     provision for your comfort. In the hope that you will be
     able to come to me at an early date,

                     "I am, dear sir,

                            "Yours truly,

                                  "FRANCIS RAVEN.

  "Leonard Middlebrook, ESQ.,

    "35M, Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, W. C."

Several matters referred to in this letter inclined me towards going
to Ravensdene Court--the old family mansion--the thousands of ancient
volumes--the prospect of unearthing something of real note--the
chance of examining a collector's harvest--and perhaps more than
anything, the genuinely courteous and polite tone of my invitation. I
was not particularly busy at that time, nor had I been out of London
for more than a few days now and then for several years: a change to
the far-different North had its attractions. And after a brief
correspondence with him, I arranged to go down to Mr. Raven early in
March, and remain under his roof until I had completed the task which
he desired me to undertake. As I have said already, I left London on
the 8th of March, journeying to Newcastle by the afternoon express
from King's Cross. I spent that night at Newcastle and went forward
next morning to Alnmouth, which according to a map with which I had
provided myself, was the nearest station to Ravensdene Court. And soon
after arriving at Alnmouth the first chapter of my adventures opened,
and came about by sheer luck. It was a particularly fine, bright,
sharply-bracing morning, and as I was under no particular obligation
to present myself at Ravensdene Court at any fixed time, I determined
to walk thither by way of the coast. The distance, according to my
map, was about nine or ten miles. Accordingly, sending on my luggage
by a conveyance, with a message to Mr. Raven that I should arrive
during the afternoon, I made through the village of Lesbury toward the
sea, and before long came in sight of it ... a glorious stretch of
blue, smooth that day as an island lake and shining like polished
steel in the light of the sun. There was not a sail in sight, north
or south or due east, nor a wisp of trailing smoke from any passing
steamer: I got an impression of silent, unbroken immensity which
seemed a fitting prelude to the solitudes into which my mission had
brought me.

I was at that time just thirty years of age, and though I had been
closely kept to London of late years, my youth had been spent in
lonely places, and I had an innate love of solitudes and wide spaces.
I saw at once that I should fall in love with this Northumbrian coast,
and once on its headlands I took my time, sauntering along at my
leisure: Mr. Raven, in one of his letters, had mentioned seven as his
dinner hour: therefore, I had the whole day before me. By noon the sun
had grown warm, even summer-like; warm enough, at any rate, to warrant
me in sitting down on a ledge of the cliffs while I smoked a pipe of
tobacco and stared lazily at the mighty stretch of water across which,
once upon a time, the vikings had swarmed from Norway. I must have
become absorbed in my meditations--certainly it was with a start of
surprise that I suddenly realized that somebody was near me, and
looked up to see, standing close by and eyeing me furtively, a man.

It was, perhaps, the utter loneliness of my immediate surroundings
just then that made me wonder to see any living thing so near. At that
point there was neither a sail on the sea, nor a human habitation on
the land; there was not even a sheep cropping the herbage of the
headlands. I think there were birds calling about the pinnacles of the
cliffs--yet it seemed to me that the man broke a complete stillness
when he spoke, as he quietly wished me a good morning.

The sound of his voice startled me; also, it brought me out of a
reverie and sharpened my wits, and as I replied to him, I took him in
from head to foot. A thick-set middle-aged man, tidily dressed in a
blue serge suit of nautical cut, the sort of thing that they sell,
ready-made, in sea-ports and naval stations. His clothes went with his
dark skin and grizzled hair and beard, and with the gold rings which
he wore in his ears. And there was that about him which suggested that
he was for that time an idler, lounging.

"A fine morning," I remarked, not at all averse to entering into
conversation, and already somewhat curious about him.

"A fine morning it is, master, and good weather, and likely to keep
so," he answered, glancing around at sea and sky. Then he looked
significantly at my knickerbockers and at a small satchel which I
carried over my shoulders. "The right sort o' weather," he added, "for
gentlemen walking about the country--pleasuring."

"You know these parts," I suggested.

"No!" he said, with a decisive shake of his head. "I don't, master,
and that's a fact. I'm from the south, I am--never been up this way
before, and, queerly enough, for I've seen most of the world in my
time, never sailed this here sea as lies before us. But I've a sort of
connection with this bit of country--mother's side came from
hereabouts. And me having nothing particular to do, I came down here
to take a cast round, like, seeing places as I've heard of--heard of,
you understand, but ain't never seen."

"Then you're stopping in the neighbourhood?" I asked.

He raised one of his brown, hairy hands, and jerked a thumb landwards.

"Stopped last night in a little place, inland," he answered. "Name of
Lesbury--a riverside spot. But that ain't what I want--what I want is
a churchyard, or it might be two, or it might be three, where there's
gravestones what bears a name. Only I don't know where that
churchyard--or, again, there may be more than one--is, d'ye see?
Except--somewhere between Alnmouth one way and Brandnell Bay,
t'other."

"I have a good map, if it's any use to you," I said. He took the map
with a word of thanks, and after spreading it out, traced places with
the end of his thick forefinger.

"Hereabouts we are, at this present, master," he said, "and here and
there is, to be sure, villages--mostly inland. And'll have graveyards
to 'em--folks must be laid away somewhere. And in one of them
graveyards there'll be a name, and if I see that name, I'll know where
I am, and I can ask further, aiming at to find out if any of that name
is still flourishing hereabouts. But till I get that name, I'm clear
off my course, so to speak."

"What is the name?" I asked him.

"Name of Netherfield," he answered, slowly. "Netherfield. Mother's
people--long since. So I've been told. And seen it--in old books, what
I have far away in Devonport. That's the name, right enough, only I
don't know where to look for it. You ain't seen it, master, in your
wanderings round these parts?"

"I've only come into these parts this morning," I replied. "But--if
you look closely at that map, you'll observe that there aren't many
villages along the coast, so your search ought not to be a lengthy
one. I should question if you'll find more than two or three
churchyards between here and Brandell Bay--judging by the map."

"Aye, well, Netherfield is the name," he repeated. "Netherfield,
mother's side. In some churchyards hereabouts. And there may be some
of 'em left--and again there mayn't be. My name being Quick--Salter
Quick. Of Devonport--when on land."

He folded up and handed back the map, with an old-fashioned bow. I
rose from the ledge of rock on which I had been resting, and made to
go forward.

"I hope you'll come across what you're seeking, Mr. Quick," I said.
"But I should say you won't have much difficulty. There can't be many
churchyards in this quarter, and not many gravestones in any of them."

"I found nothing in that one behind," he answered, jerking his thumb
towards Lesbury. "And it's a long time since my mother left these
parts. But here I am--for the purpose, d'ye see, master. Time's no
object--nor yet expense. A man must take a bit of a holiday some day
or other. Ain't had one--me--for thirty odd year."

       *       *       *       *       *

We walked forward, northing our course, along the headlands. And
rounding a sharp corner, we suddenly came in sight of a little
settlement that lay half-way down the cliff. There was a bit of a
cottage or two, two or three boats drawn up on a strip of yellow sand,
a crumbling smithie, and above these things, on a shelf of rock, a
low-roofed, long-fronted inn, by the gable of which rose a mast,
wherefrom floated a battered flag. At the sight of this I saw a gleam
come into my companion's eye, and I was quick to understand it's
meaning.

"Do you feel disposed to a glass of ale?" I asked. "I should say we
could get one down there."

"Rum," he replied, laconically. "Rum is my drink, master. Used to
that--I ain't used to ale. Cold stuff! Give me something that warms a
man."

"It's poor ale that won't warm a man's belly," I said with a laugh.
"But every man to his taste. Come on, then."

He followed in silence down the path to the lonely inn; once, looking
back, I saw that he was turning a sharp eye round and about the new
stretch of country that had just opened before us. From the inn and
its surroundings a winding track, a merely rough cartway, wound off
and upward into the land; in the distance I saw the tower of a church.
Salter Quick saw it, too, and nodded significantly in its direction.

"That'll be where I'll make next," he observed. "But first--meat and
drink. I ate my breakfast before seven this morning, and this walking
about on dry land makes a man hungry."

"Drink you'll get here, no doubt," said I. "But as to meat--doubtful."

His reply to that was to point to the sign above the inn door, to
which we were now close. He read its announcement aloud, slowly.

"'The Mariner's Joy. By Hildebrand Claigue. Good Entertainment for Man
and Beast,'" he pronounced. "'Entertainment'--that means eating--meat
for man; hay for cattle. Not that there's much sign of either in these
parts, I think, master."

We walked into the Mariner's Joy side by side, turning into a
low-ceilinged, darkish room, neat and clean enough, wherein there was
a table, chairs, the model of a ship in a glass case on the
mantelpiece, and a small bar, furnished with bottles and glasses,
behind which stood a tall, middle-aged man, clean-shaven, spectacled,
reading a newspaper. He bade us good morning, with no sign of surprise
at the presence of strangers, and looked expectantly from one to the
other. I turned to my companion.

"Well?" I said. "You'll drink with me? What is it--rum?"

"Rum it is, master, thanking you," he replied. "But vittals, too, is
what I want." He glanced knowingly at the landlord. "You ain't got
such a thing as a plateful--a good plateful!--of cold beef, with a
pickle--onion or walnut, 'tain't no matter. And bread--a loaf of real
home-baked? And a morsel of cheese?"

The landlord smiled as he reached for the rum bottle.

"I daresay we can fit you up, my lad," he answered. "Got a nice round
of boiled beef on go--as it happens. Drop of rum first, eh? And--yours
sir?"

"A glass of ale if you please," said I. "And as I'm not quite as
hungry as our friend here, a crust of bread and a piece of cheese."

The landlord satisfied our demands, and then vanished through a door
at the back of his bar. And when he had expressed his wishes for my
good health, Salter Quick tasted the rum, smacked his lips over it,
and looked about him with evident approval.

"Sort of port that a vessel might put into with security and comfort
for a day or two, this, master," he observed. "I reckon I'll put
myself up here, while I'm looking round--this will do me very well.
And doubtless there'll be them coming in here, night-time, as'll know
the neighbourhood, and be able to give a man points as to his
bearings."

"I daresay you'll be very comfortable here," I assented. "It's not
exactly a desert island."

"Aye, well, and Salter Quick's been in quarters of that sort in his
time," he observed, with a glance that suggested infinite meaning. "He
has, so! But this ain't no desert island, master. I can see they ain't
short of good grub and sound liquor here!"

He made his usual jerk of the thumb--this time in the direction of the
landlord, who just then came back with a well-filled tray. And
presently, first removing his cap and saying his grace in a devout
fashion, he sat down and began to eat with an evidently sharp-set
appetite. Trifling with my bread and cheese, I turned to the landlord.

"This is a very lonely spot," I said. "I was surprised to see a
licensed house here. Where do you get your customers?"

"Ah, you wouldn't see it as you came along," replied the landlord. "I
saw you coming--you came from Alnmouth way. There's a village just
behind here--it 'ud be hidden from you by this headland at back of the
house--goodish-sized place. Plenty o' custom from that, o' nights. And
of course there's folks going along, north and south."

Quick, his weather-stained cheeks bulging with his food, looked up
sharply.

"A village, says you!" he exclaimed. "Then if a village, a church. And
if a church, a churchyard. There is a churchyard, ain't there?"

"Why, there is a church, and there's a churchyard to it," replied the
landlord. "What o' that?"

Quick nodded at me.

"As I been explaining to this gentleman," he said, "churchyards is
what I'm looking for. Graves in 'em, you understand. And on them
graves, a name. Name of Netherfield. Now I asks you, friendly--ha' you
ever seen that name in your churchyard? 'Cause if so I'm at anchor.
For the time being."

"Well, I haven't," answered the landlord. "But our churchyard--Lord
bless you, there's scores o' them flat stones in it that's covered
with long grass--there might be that name on some of 'em, for aught I
know; I've never looked 'em over, I'm sure. But----"

Just then there came into the parlour a man, who from his rough dress,
appeared to be a cattle-drover or a shepherd. Claigue turned to him
with a glance that seemed to indicate him as authority.

"Here's one as lives by that churchyard," he observed. "Jim! ha' you
ever noticed the name of Netherfield on any o' them old gravestones up
yonder? This gentleman's asking after it, and I know you mow that
churchyard grass time and again."

"Never seen it!" answered the new-comer. "But--strange things!--there
was a man come up to me the other night, this side o' Lesbury, and
asked that very question--not o' these parts, he wasn't. But--"

He stopped at that. Salter Quick dropped his knife and fork with a
clatter, and held up his right hand.




CHAPTER II

RAVENSDENE COURT


It was very evident to Claigue and myself, interested spectators, that
the new-comer's announcement, sudden and unexpected as it was, had had
the instantaneous effect of making Quick forget his beef and his rum.
Indeed, although he was only half-way through its contents, he pushed
his plate away from him as if food were just then nauseous to him; his
right hand lifted itself in an arresting, commanding gesture, and he
turned a startled eye on the speaker, looking him through and through
as if in angry doubt of what he had just said.

"What's that?" he snapped out. "What says you? Say it again--no, I'll
say it for you--to make sure that my ears ain't deceiving me! You met
a man--hereabouts--what asked you if you knew where there was graves
with a certain name on 'em? And that name was--Netherfield? Did you
say that?--I asks you serious?"

The drover, or shepherd, or whatever he was, looked from Quick to me
and then to Claigue, and smiled, as if he wondered at Quick's
intensity of manner.

"You've got it all right, mister," he answered. "That's just what I
did say. A stranger chap, he was--never seen him in these parts
before."

Quick took up his glass and drank. There was no doubt about his being
upset, for his big hand trembled.

"Where was this here?" he demanded. "Recent?"

"Two nights ago," replied the man readily. "I was coming home,
lateish, from Almwick, and met with this here chap a bit this side o'
Lesbury. We walked a piece of the road together, talking. And he asked
me what I've told you. Did I know these parts?--was I a native
hereabouts?--did I know any churchyards with the name Netherfield on
gravestones? And I said I didn't, but that there was such-like places
in our parts where you couldn't see the gravestones for the grass, and
these might be what he was asking after. And when we came to them
cross-roads, where it goes to Denwick one direction and Boulmer the
other, he left me, and I ain't seen aught of him since. Nor heard."

Quick pushed his empty glass across the table, with a sign to Claigue
to refill it; at the same time he pointed silently to his informant,
signifying that he was to be served at his expense. He was evidently
deep in thought by that time, and for a moment or two he sat staring
at the window and the blue sea beyond, abstracted and pondering.
Suddenly he turned again on his informant.

"What like was this here man?" he demanded.

"I couldn't tell you, mister," replied the other. "It was well after
dark and I never saw his face. But, for the build of him, a strong-set
man, like myself, and just about your height. And now I come to think
of it, spoke in your way--not as we do in these quarters. A
stranger--like yourself. Seafaring man, I took him for."

"And you ain't heard of his being about?" asked Quick.

"Not a word, mister," affirmed the informant. "He went Denwick way
when he left me. That's going inland."

Quick turned to me.

"I would like to see that map of yours again, master, if you please,"
he said. "I ought to ha' provided myself with one before I came here."
He spread the map out before him, and after taking another gulp of his
rum, proceeded to trace roads and places with the point of his finger.
"Denwick?" he muttered. "Aye I see that. And these places where
there's a little cross?--that'll mean there's a church there?"

I nodded an affirmative, silently watching him, and wondering what
this desire on the part of two men to find the graves of the
Netherfields might mean. And the landlord evidently shared my wonder,
for presently he plumped his customer with a direct question.

"You seem very anxious to find these Netherfield gravestones," he
remarked, with good-humoured inquisitiveness. "And so, apparently,
does another man. Now, I've been in these parts a good many years, and
I've never heard of 'em; never even heard the name."

"Nor me!" said the other man. "There's none o' that name in these
parts--'twixt Alnmouth Bay and Budle Point. I ain't never heard it!"

"And he's a native," declared the landlord. "Born and bred and brought
up here. Wasn't you, Jim?"

"Never been away from it," assented Jim, with a short laugh. "Never
been farther north than Belford, south than Warkworth, west than
Whittingham. And as for east, I reckon you can't get much further that
way than where we are now."

"Not unless you take to the water, you can't," said Claigue. "No--we
ain't heard of no Netherfields hereabouts."

Quick seemed indifferent to these remarks. He suddenly folded up the
map, returned it to me with a word of thanks, and plunging a hand in
his trousers' pocket, produced a fistful of gold coins.

"What's to pay?" he demanded. "Take it out o' that--all we've had, and
do you help yourself to a glass and a cigar." He flung a sovereign on
the table, and rose to his feet. "I must be stepping along," he
continued, looking at me. "If so be as there's another man seeking
for----"

But at that he checked himself, remaining silent until Claigue counted
out and handed over his change; silently, too, he pocketed it, and
turned to the door. Claigue stopped him with an arresting word and
motion of his hand.

"I say!" he said. "No business of mine, to be sure, but--don't you
show that money of yours over readily hereabouts--in places like this,
I mean. There's folk up and down these roads that 'ud track you for
miles on the chance of--eh, Jim?"

"Aye--and farther!" assented Jim. "Keep it close, master."

Quick listened quietly--just as quietly he slipped a hand to his hip
pocket, brought it back to the front and showed a revolver.

"That and me, together--eh?" he said significantly. "Bad look-out for
anybody that came between us and the light."

"They might come between you and the dark," retorted Claigue. "Take
care of yourself! 'Tisn't a wise thing to flash a handful of gold
about, my lad."

Quick made no remark. He walked out on to the cobbled pavement in
front of the inn, and when I had paid Claigue for my modest lunch, and
had asked how far it was to Ravensdene Court, I followed him. He was
still in a brown study, and stood staring about him with moody eyes.

"Well?" I said, still inquisitive about this apparently mysterious
man. "What next? Are you going on with your search?"

He scraped the point of a boot on the cobble-stones for awhile, gazing
downwards almost as if he expected to unearth something; suddenly he
raised his eyes and gave me a franker look than I had so far had from
him.

"Master," he said, in a low voice, and with a side glance at the open
door of the inn, "I'll tell you a bit more than I've said
before--you're a gentleman, I can see, and such keeps counsel. I've an
object--and a particular object!--in finding them graves. That's why
I've travelled all this way--as you might say, from one end of England
to the other. And now, arriving where they ought to be, I
find--another man after what I'm after! Another man!"

"Have you any idea who he may be?" I asked.

He hesitated--and then suddenly shook his head.

"I haven't!" he answered. "No, I haven't, and that's a fact. For a
minute or two, in there, I thought that maybe I did know, or, at any
rate, had a notion; but it's a fact, I haven't. All the same, I'm
going Denwick way, to see if I can come across whoever it is, or get
news of him. Is that your road, master?"

"No," I replied. "I'm going some way farther along the headlands.
Well--I hope you'll be successful in your search for the family
gravestones."

He nodded, very seriously.

"I'm not going out o' this country till I've found 'em!" he asserted
determinedly. "It's what I've come three hundred miles for. Good-day,
master."

He turned off by the track that led over the top of the headlands, and
as long as I watched him went steadily forward without even looking
back, or to the right or left of him. And presently I, too, went on my
way, and rounding another corner of the cliff left the lonely inn
behind me.

       *       *       *       *       *

But as I went along, following the line of the headlands, I wondered a
good deal about Salter Quick and the conversation at the Mariner's
Joy. What was it that this hard-bitten, travel-worn man, one who had
seen, evidently, much of wind and wave, was really after? I gave no
credence to his story of the family relationship--it was not at all
likely that a man would travel all the way from Devonshire to
Northumberland to find the graves of his mother's ancestors. There was
something beyond that--but what? It was very certain that Quick wanted
to come across the tombs of the dead and gone Netherfields, however,
for whatever purpose--certain, too, that there was another man who had
the same wish. That complicated matters, and it deepened the mystery.
Why did two men--seafaring men, both of them--arrive in this
out-of-the-way spot about the same time, unknown to each other, but
each apparently bent on the same object? And what would happen if, as
seemed likely, they met? It was impossible to find an answer to these
questions; but the mystery was there, all the same.

The afternoon remained fine, and, for the time of year, warm, and I
took advantage of it by dawdling along that glorious stretch of
sea-coast, taking in to the full its rich stores of romantic scenery
and suggestion of long-past ages. Sometimes I sat for a long time,
smoking my pipe on the edge of the headlands, staring at the blue of
the water, the curl of the waves on the brown sands, conscious most of
the compelling silence, and only dimly aware of the calling of the
sea-birds on the cliffs. Altogether, the afternoon was drawing to its
close when, rounding a bluff that had been in view before me for some
time, I came in sight of what I felt sure to be Ravensdene Court, a
grey-walled, stone-roofed Tudor mansion that stood at the head of a
narrow valley or ravine--dene they call it in those parts, though a
dene is really a tract of sand, while these breaks in the land are
green and thickly treed--through which a narrow, rock-encumbered
stream ran murmuring to the sea. Very picturesque in its old-worldness
it looked in the mellowing light; the very place, I thought, which a
bookman and an antiquary, such as I had heard the late owner to be,
would delight to store with his collections.

A path that led inland from the edge of the cliffs took me after a few
minutes' walking to a rustic gate which was set in the boundary wall
of a small park; within the wall rose a belt of trees, mostly oak and
beech, their trunks obscured by a thick undergrowth. Passing through
this, I came out on the park itself, at a point where, on a well-kept
green, a girl, whom I immediately took to be the niece, recently
released from the schoolroom, of whom Mr. Raven had spoken in his
letter, was studying the lie of a golf ball. Behind her, carrying her
bag of sticks, stood a small boy, chiefly remarkable for his large
boots and huge tam-o'-shanter bonnet, who, as I appeared on the scene,
was intently watching his young mistress's putter, wavering
uncertainly in her slender hands before she ventured on what was
evidently a critical stroke. But before the stroke was made the girl
caught sight of me, paused, seemed to remember something, and then,
swinging her club, came lightly in my direction--a tallish,
elastic-limbed girl, not exactly pretty, but full of attraction
because of her clear eyes, healthy skin, and general atmosphere of
life and vivacity. Recently released from the schoolroom though she
might be, she showed neither embarrassment nor shyness on meeting a
stranger. Her hand went out to me with ready frankness.

"Mr. Middlebrook?" she said inquiringly. "Yes, of course--I might have
known you'd come along the cliffs. Your luggage came this morning, and
we got your message. But you must be tired after all those miles?
I'll take you up to the house and give you some tea."

"I'm not at all tired, thank you," I answered. "I came along very
leisurely, enjoying the walk. Don't let me take you from your game."

"Oh, that's all right," she said carelessly, throwing her putter to
the boy. "I've had quite enough; besides, it's getting towards dusk,
and once the sun sets, it's soon dark in these regions. You've never
seen Ravensdene Court before?"

"Never," I replied, glancing at the house, which stood some two or three
hundred yards before us. "It seems to be a very romantically-situated,
picturesque old place. I suppose you know all its nooks and corners?"

She gave her shoulders--squarely-set, well-developed ones--a little
shrug, and shook her head.

"No, I don't," she answered. "I never saw it before last month. It's
all that you say--picturesque and romantic enough. And queer! I
believe it's haunted."

"That adds to its charm," I remarked with a laugh. "I hope I shall
have the pleasure of seeing the ghost."

"I don't!" she said. "That is, I hope I shan't. The house is odd
enough without that! But--you wouldn't be afraid?"

"Would you?" I asked, looking more closely at her.

"I don't know," she replied. "You'll understand more when you see the
place. There's a very odd atmosphere about it. I think something must
have happened there, some time. I'm not a coward, but, really, after
the daylight's gone----"

"You're adding to its charms!" I interrupted. "Everything sounds
delightful!"

She looked at me half-inquiringly, and then smiled a little.

"I believe you're pulling my leg," she said. "However--we'll see. But
you don't look as if you would be afraid--and you're not a bit like
what I thought you'd be, either."

"What did you think I should be?" I asked, amused at her candour.

"Oh, I don't know--a queer, snuffy, bald-pated old man, like Mr.
Cazalette," she replied. "Booky, and papery, and that sort of thing.
And you're quite--something else--and young!"

"The frost of thirty winters have settled on me," I remarked with mock
seriousness.

"They must have been black frosts, then!" she retorted. "No!--you're a
surprise. I'm sure Uncle Francis is expecting a venerable, dry-as-dust
sort of man."

"I hope he won't be disappointed," I said. "But I never told him I was
dry as dust, or snuffy, or bald----"

"It's your reputation," she said quickly. "People don't expect to find
such learning in ordinary young men in tweed suits."

"Am I an ordinary young man, then?" I demanded. "Really----"

"Oh, well, you know what I mean!" she said hastily. "You can call me
a very ordinary young woman, if you like."

"I shall do nothing of the sort!" said I. "I have a habit of always
calling things by their right names, and I can see already that you
are very far from being an ordinary young woman."

"So you begin by paying me compliments?" she retorted with a laugh.
"Very well--I've no objection, which shows that I'm human, anyhow. But
here is my uncle."

I had already seen Mr. Francis Raven advancing to meet us; a tall,
somewhat stooping man with all the marks of the Anglo-Indian about
him: a kindly face burnt brown by equatorial suns, old-fashioned,
grizzled moustache and whiskers; the sort of man that I had seen more
than once coming off big liners at Tilbury and Southampton, looking as
if England, seen again after many years of absence, were a strange
country to their rather weary, wondering eyes. He came up with
outstretched hands; I saw at once that he was a man of shy, nervous
temperament.

"Welcome to Ravensdene Court, Mr. Middlebrook!" he exclaimed in quick,
almost deprecating fashion. "A very dull and out-of-the-way place to
which to bring one used to London; but we'll do our best--you've had a
convoy across the park, I see," he added with a glance at his niece.
"That's right!"

"As charming a one as her surroundings are delightful, Mr. Raven," I
said, assuming an intentionally old-fashioned manner. "If I am treated
with the same consideration I have already received, I shall be loth
to bring my task to an end!"

"Mr. Middlebrook is a bit of a tease, Uncle Francis," said my guide.
"I've found that out already. He's not the paper-and-parchment person
you expected."

"Oh, dear me, I didn't expect anything of the sort!" protested Mr.
Raven. He looked from his niece to me, and laughed, shaking his head.
"These modern young ladies--ah!" he exclaimed. "But come--I'll show
Mr. Middlebrook his rooms."

He led the way into the house and up the great stair of the hall to a
couple of apartments which overlooked the park. I had a general sense
of big spaces, ancient things, mysterious nooks and corners; my own
rooms, a bed-chamber and a parlour, were delightful. My host was
almost painfully anxious to assure himself that I had everything in
them that I was likely to want, and fussed about from one room to the
other, seeing to details that I should never have thought of.

"You'll be able to find your way down?" he said at last, as he made
for the door. "We dine at seven--perhaps there'll be time to take a
little look round before then, after we've dressed. And I must
introduce Mr. Cazalette--you don't know him personally?--oh, a
remarkable man, a very remarkable man indeed--yes!"

I did not waste much time over my toilet, nor, apparently did Miss
Marcia Raven, for I found her, in a smart gown, in the hall when I
went down at half-past-six. And she and I had taken a look at its
multifarious objects before Mr. Raven appeared on the scene, followed
by Mr. Cazalette. One glance at this gentleman assured me that our
host had been quite right when he spoke of him as remarkable--he was
not merely remarkable, but so extraordinary in outward appearance that
I felt it difficult to keep my eyes off him.




CHAPTER III

THE MORNING TIDE


Miss Raven had already described Mr. Cazalette to me, by inference, as
a queer, snuffy bald-pated old man, but this summary synopsis of his
exterior features failed to do justice to a remarkable original. There
was something supremely odd about him. I thought, at first, that my
impression of oddity might be derived from his clothes--he wore a
strangely-cut dress-coat of blue cloth, with gold buttons, a buff
waistcoat, and a frilled shirt--but I soon came to the conclusion that
he would be queer and uncommon in any garments. About Mr. Cazalette
there was an atmosphere--and it was decidedly one of mystery. First
and last, he looked uncanny.

Mr. Raven introduced us with a sort of old-world formality (I soon
discovered, as regards him, that he was so far unaware that a vast
gulf lay between the manners and customs of society as they are
nowadays and as they were when he left England for India in the
'seventies: he was essentially mid-Victorian) and in order to keep up
to it, I saluted Mr. Cazalette with great respect and expressed myself
as feeling highly honoured by meeting one so famous as my
fellow-guest. Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Cazalette's tightly-locked
lips relaxed into what was plainly a humorous smile, and he favoured
me with a knowing look that was almost a wink.

"Aye, well," he said, "you're just about as well known in your own
line, Middlebrook, as I am in mine, and between the pair of us I've no
doubt we'll be able to reduce chaos into order. But we'll not talk
shop at this hour of the day--there's more welcome matters at hand."

He put his snuff box and his gaudy handkerchief out of sight, and
looked at his host and hostess with another knowing glance, reminding
me somehow of a wicked old condor which I had sometimes seen at the
Zoological Gardens, eyeing the keeper who approached with its meal.

"Mr. Cazalette," remarked Miss Raven, with an informing glance at me,
"never, on principle, touches bite or sup between breakfast and
dinner--and he has no great love of breakfast."

"I'm a disciple of the justly famed and great man, Abernethy,"
observed Mr. Cazalette. "I'd never have lived to my age nor kept my
energy at what, thank Heaven, it is, if I hadn't been. D'ye know how
old I am, Middlebrook?"

"I really don't, Mr. Cazalette," I replied.

"Well I'm eighty years of age," he answered with a grin. "And I'm
intending to be a hundred! And on my hundredth birthday, I'll give a
party, and I'll dance with the sprightliest lassie that's there, and
if I'm not as lively as she is I'll be sore out of my calculations."

"A truly wonderful young man!" exclaimed Mr. Raven. "I veritably
believe he feels--and is--younger than myself--and I'm twenty years
his junior."

So I had now discovered certain facts about Mr. Cazalette. He was an
octogenarian. He was uncannily active. He had an almost imp-like
desire to live--and to dance when he ought to have been wrapped in
blankets and saying his last prayers. And a few minutes later, when we
were seated round our host's table, I discovered another fact--Mr.
Cazalette was one of those men to whom dinner is the event of the day,
and who regard conversation--on their own part, at any rate--as a
wicked disturbance of sacred rites. As the meal progressed (and Mr.
Raven's cook proved to be an unusually clever and good one) I was
astonished at Mr. Cazalette's gastronomic powers and at his love of
mad dishes: indeed, I never saw a man eat so much, nor with such
hearty appreciation of his food, nor in such a concentrated silence.
Nevertheless, that he kept his ears wide open to what was being said
around him, I soon discovered. I was telling Mr. Raven and his niece
of my adventure of the afternoon, and suddenly I observed that Mr.
Cazalette, on the other side of the round table at which we sat, had
stopped eating, and that, knife and fork still in his queer, claw-like
hands, he was peering at me under the shaded lamps, his black, burning
eyes full of a strange, absorbed interest. I paused--involuntarily.

"Go on!" said he. "Did you mention the name Netherfield just then?"

"I did," said I. "Netherfield."

"Well, continue with your tale," he said. "I'm listening. I'm a
silent man when I'm busy with my meat and drink, but I've a fine pair
of ears."

He began to ply knife and fork again, and I went on with my story,
continuing it until the parting with Salter Quick. When I came to
that, the footman who stood behind Mr. Cazalette's chair was just
removing his last plate, and the old man leaned back a little and
favoured the three of us with a look.

"Aye, well," he said, "and that's an interesting story, Middlebrook,
and it tempts me to break my rule and talk a bit. It was some
churchyard this fellow was seeking?"

"A churchyard--in this neighbourhood," I replied. "Or--churchyards."

"Where there were graves with the name Netherfield on their stones or
slabs or monuments," he continued.

"Aye--just so. And those men he foregathered with at the inn, they'd
never heard of anything at that point, nor elsewhere?"

"Neither there nor elsewhere," I assented.

"Then if there is such a place," said he, "it'll be one of those
disused burial-grounds of which there are examples here in the north,
and not a few."

"You know of some?" suggested Mr. Raven.

"I've seen such places," answered Mr. Cazalette. "Betwixt here--the
sea-coast--and the Cheviots, westward, there's a good many spots that
Goldsmith might have drawn upon for his deserted village. The folks
go--the bit of a church falls into ruins--its graveyard gets choked
with weeds--the stones are covered with moss and lichen--the monuments
fall and are obscured by the grass--underneath the grass and the weed
many an old family name lies hidden. And what'll that man be wanting
to find any name at all for, I'd like to know!"

"The queer thing to me," observed Mr. Raven, "is that two men should
be wanting to find it at the same time."

"That looks as if there were some very good reason why it should be
found, doesn't it?" remarked his niece. "Anyway, it all sounds very
queer--you've brought mystery with you, Mr. Middlebrook! Can't you
suggest anything, Mr. Cazalette? I'm sure you're good at solving
problems."

But just then Mr. Cazalette's particular servant put a fresh dish in
front of him--a curry, the peculiar aroma of which evidently aroused
his epicurean instinct. Instead of responding to Miss Raven's
invitation he relapsed into silence, and picked up another fork.

When dinner was over I excused myself from sitting with the two elder
men over their wine--Mr. Cazalette, whom by that time I, of course,
knew for a Scotchman, turned out to have an old-fashioned taste for
claret--and joined Miss Raven in the hall, a great, roomy, shadowy
place which was evidently popular. There was a great fire in its big
hearth-place with deep and comfortable chairs set about it; in one of
these I found her sitting, a book in her hand. She dropped it as I
approached and pointed to a chair at her side.

"What do you think of that queer old man?" she asked in a low voice as I
sat down. "Isn't there something almost--what is it?--uncanny?--about
him?"

"You might call him that," I assented. "Yes--I think uncanny would fit
him. A very marvellous man, though, at his age."

"Aye!" she exclaimed, under her breath. "If I could live to see it, it
wouldn't surprise me if he lived to be four hundred. He's so queer. Do
you know that he actually goes out early--very early--in the morning
and swims in the open sea?"

"Any weather?" I suggested.

"No matter what the weather is," she replied. "He's been here three
weeks now, and he has never missed that morning swim. And sometimes
the mornings have been Arctic--more than I could stand, anyway, and
I'm pretty well hardened."

"A decided character!" I said musingly. "And somehow, he seems to fit
in with his present surroundings. From what I have seen of it, Mr.
Raven was quite right in telling me that this house was a museum."

I was looking about me as I spoke. The big, high-roofed hall, like
every room I had so far seen, was filled from floor to ceiling with
books, pictures, statuary, armour, curiosities of every sort and of
many ages. The prodigious numbers of the books alone showed me that I
had no light task in prospect. But Miss Raven shook her head.

"Museum!" she exclaimed. "I should think so! But you've seen
nothing--wait till you see the north wing. Every room in that is
crammed with things--I think my great-uncle, who left all this to
Uncle Francis recently, must have done nothing whatever but buy, and
buy, and buy things, and then, when he got them home, have just dumped
them down anywhere! There's some order here," she added, looking
round, "but across there, in the north wing, it's confusion."

"Did you know your great-uncle?" I asked.

"I? No!" she replied. "Oh, dear me, no! I'd never been in the north
until Uncle Francis came home from India some months ago and fetched
me from the school where I'd been ever since my father and mother
died--that was when I was twelve. No, except my father, I never knew
any of the Raven family. I believe Uncle Francis and myself are the
very last."

"You must like living under the old family roof?" I suggested.

She gave me a somewhat undecided look.

"I'm not quite sure," she answered. "Uncle Francis is the very soul of
kindness--I think he's the very kindest person, man or woman, I ever
came across, but--I don't know."

"Don't know--what?" I asked.

"Don't know if I really like this place," she said. "As I said to you
this afternoon, this is a very odd house altogether, and there's a
strange atmosphere about it, and I think something must have happened
here. I--well, personally, I feel as if I were something so very small
and insignificant, shut up in immensity."

"That's because it's a little strange, even now," I suggested. "You'll
get used to it. And I suppose there's society."

"Uncle Francis is a good deal of a recluse," she answered. "It's
really a very good thing that I'm fond of outdoor life, and that I
take an interest in books, too. But I'm very deficient in knowledge in
book matters--do teach me something while you're here!--I'd like to
know a good deal about all these folios and quartos and so on."

I made haste to reply that I should be only too happy to put my
knowledge at her disposal, and she responded by saying that she would
like to help me in classifying and inspecting the various volumes
which the dead-and-gone great-uncle had collected. We got on very well
together, and I was a little sorry when my host came in with his other
guest--who, a loop-hole being given him, proceeded to give us a
learned dissertation on the evidences of Roman occupation of the North
of England as evidenced by recent and former discoveries of coins
between Trent and Tweed: it was doubtless very interesting, and a
striking proof of Mr. Cazalette's deep and profound knowledge of his
special subject, and at another time I should have listened to it
gladly. But--somehow I should just then have preferred to chat quietly
in the corner of the hearth with Miss Raven.

We all retire early--that, Mr. Raven informed me with a shy laugh, as
if he were confessing a failing, was the custom of the house. But, he
added, I should find a fire in my sitting-room, so that if I wanted to
read or write, I should be comfortable in my retirement. On hearing
that, I begged him to countermand any such luxuries on my account in
future; it was my invariable habit, I assured him, to retire to bed at
ten o'clock, wherever I was--reading or writing at night, I said,
were practices which I rigidly tabooed. Mr. Cazalette, who stood by,
grimly listening, nodded approval.

"Wise lad!" he said. "That's another reason why I'm what I am. Don't
let any mistake be made about it!--the old saw, much despised and
laughed at though it is, has more in it than anybody thinks for. Get
to your pillow early, and leave it early!--that's the sure thing."

"I don't think I should like to get up as early as you do, though,"
remarked Mr. Raven. "You certainly don't give the worms much chance!"

"Aye, and I've caught a few in my time," assented the old gentleman,
complacently. "And I hope to catch a few more yet. You folk who don't
get up till the morning's half over don't know what you miss."

I slept soundly that night--a strange bed and unfamiliar surroundings
affect me not at all. Just as suddenly as I had dropped asleep, I
woke. My windows face due east--I was instantly aware that the sun had
either risen or was just about to rise. Springing out of bed and
drawing up the blind of one of the three tall, narrow windows of my
room, I saw him mounting behind a belt of pine and fir which stretched
along a bluff of land that ran down to the open sea. And I saw, too,
that it was high tide--the sea had stolen up the creek which ran right
to the foot of the park, and the wide expanse of water glittered and
coruscated in the brilliance of the morning glory.

My watch lay on the dressing-table close by; glancing at it, I saw
that the time was twenty-five minutes to seven. I had been told that
the family breakfasted at nine, so I had nearly two-and-a-half hours
of leisure. Of course, I would go out, and enjoy the freshness of the
morning. I turned to the window again, just to take another view of
the scenery in front of the house, and to decide in which direction I
would go. And there, emerging from a wicket-gate that opened out of an
adjacent plantation, I caught sight of Mr. Cazalette.

It was evident that this robust octogenarian had been taking that
morning swim of which Miss Raven had told me the previous evening. He
was muffled up in an old pea-jacket; various towels were festooned
about his shoulders; his bald head shone in the rising sun. I watched
him curiously as he came along the borders of a thick yew hedge at the
side of the gardens. Suddenly, at a particular point, he stopped, and
drawing something out of his towels, thrust it, at the full length of
his arm, into the closely interwoven mass of twig and foliage at his
side. Then he moved forward towards the house; a bushy clump of
rhododendron hid him from my sight. Two or three minutes later I heard
a door close somewhere near my own; Mr. Cazalette had evidently
re-entered his own apartment.

I was bathed, shaved, and dressed by a quarter past seven, and finding
my way out of the house went across the garden towards the wicket-gate
through which I had seen Mr. Cazalette emerge--as he had come from the
sea that way, it was, I concluded, the nearest way to it. My path led
by the yew-hedge which I have just mentioned, and I suddenly saw the
place where Mr. Cazalette had stood when he thrust his arm into it;
thereabouts, the ground was soft, mossy, damp: the marks of his shoes
were plain. Out of mere curiosity, I stood where he had stood, and
slightly parting the thick, clinging twigs, peeped into the obscurity
behind. And there, thrust right in amongst the yew, I saw something
white, a crumpled, crushed-up lump of linen, perhaps a man's
full-sized pocket-handkerchief, whereon I could make out, even in that
obscurity (and nothing in the way of hedges can be thicker or darker
than one of old, carefully-trimmed yew) brown stains and red stains,
as if from contact with soil or clay in one case, with blood in the
other.

I went onward, considerably mystified. But most people, chancing upon
anything mysterious try to explain it to their own satisfaction. I
came to the conclusion that Mr. Cazalette, during his morning swim--no
doubt in very shallow waters--had cut hand or foot against some sharp
pebble or bit of rock, and had used his handkerchief as a bandage
until the bleeding stopped. Yet--why thrust it away into the
yew-hedge, close to the house? Why carry it from the shore at all, if
he meant to get rid of it? And why not have consigned it to his
dirty-linen basket and have it washed?

"Decidedly an odd character," I mused. "A man of mystery!"

Then I dismissed him from my thoughts, my mind becoming engrossed by
the charm of my surroundings. I made my way down to the creek, passed
through the belt of pine and fir over which I had seen the sun rise,
and came out on a little, rock-bound cove, desolate and wild. Here one
was shut out from everything but the sea in front: Ravensdene Court
was no longer visible; here, amongst great masses of fallen cliff and
limpet-encrusted rock, round which the full strength of the tide was
washing, one seemed to be completely alone with sky and strand.

But the place was tenanted. I had not taken twenty paces along the
foot of the overhanging cliff before I pulled myself sharply to a
halt. There, on the sand before me, his face turned to the sky, his
arms helplessly stretched, lay Salter Quick. I knew he was dead in my
first horrified glance. And for the second time that morning, I saw
blood--red, vivid, staining the shining particles in the yellow,
sun-lighted beach.




CHAPTER IV

THE TOBACCO BOX


My first feeling of almost stupefied horror at seeing a man whom I had
met only the day before in the full tide of life and vigour lying
there in that lonely place, literally weltering in his own blood and
obviously the victim of a foul murder speedily changed to one of angry
curiosity. Who had wrought this crime? Crime it undoubtedly was--the
man's attitude, the trickle of blood from his slightly parted lips
across the stubble of his chin, the crimson stain on the sand at his
side, the whole attitude of his helpless figure, showed me that he had
been attacked from the rear and probably stricken down by a deadly
knife thrust through his shoulders. This was murder--black murder. And
my thoughts flew to what Claigue, the landlord, had said, warningly,
the previous afternoon, about the foolishness of showing so much gold.
Had Salter Quick disregarded that warning, flashed his money about in
some other public house, been followed to this out of the way spot and
run through the heart for the sake of his fistful of sovereigns? It
looked like it. But then that thought fled, and another took its
place--the recollection of the blood-stained linen, rag, bandage, or
handkerchief, which that queer man Mr. Cazalette had pushed into
hiding in the yew-hedge. Had that--had Cazalette himself--anything to
do with this crime?

The instinctive desire to get an answer to this last question made me
suddenly stoop down and lay my fingers on the dead man's open palm. I
was conscious as I did so of the extraordinary, appealing helplessness
of his hands--instead of being clenched in a death agony as I should
have expected they were stretched wide; they looked nerveless, limp,
effortless. But when my fingers came to the nearest one--the right
hand--I found that it was stiff, rigid, stone-cold. I knew then that
Salter Quick had been dead for several hours; had probably been lying
there, murdered, all through the darkness of the night.

There were no signs of any struggle. At this point the sands were
unusually firm and for the most part, all round and about the body,
they remained unbroken. Yet there were footprints, very faint indeed,
yet traceable, and I saw at once that they did not extend beyond this
spot. There were two distinct marks; one there of boots with nails in
the heels; these were certainly made by the dead man; the other
indicated a smaller, very light-soled boot, perhaps a slipper. A yard
or so behind the body these marks were mingled; that had evidently
been done when the murderer stole close up to his victim, preparatory
to dealing the fatal thrust.

Carefully, slowly, I traced these footsteps. They were plainly
traceable, faint though they were, to the edge of the low cliff, there
a gentle slope of some twelve or fifteen feet in height; I traced them
up its incline. But from the very edge of the cliff the land was
covered by a thick wire-like turf; you could have run a heavy gun
over it without leaving any impression. Yet it was clear that two men
had come across it to that point, had then descended the cliff to the
sand, walked a few yards along the beach, and then--one had murdered
the other.

Standing there, staring around me, I was suddenly startled by the
explosion of a gun, close at hand. And then, from a coppice, some
thirty yards away, a man emerged, whom I took, from his general
appearance, to be a gamekeeper. Unconscious of my presence he walked
forward in my direction, picked up a bird which his shot had brought
down, and was thrusting it into a bag that hung at his hip, when I
called to him. He looked round sharply, caught sight of me, and came
slowly in my direction, wondering, I could see, who I was. I made
towards him. He was a middle-aged, big-framed man, dark of skin and
hair, sharp-eyed.

"Are you Mr. Raven's gamekeeper?" I asked, as I got within speaking
distance. "Just so--I am staying with Mr. Raven. And I've just made a
terrible discovery. There is a man lying behind the cliff
there--dead."

"Dead, sir?" he exclaimed. "What--washed up by the tide, likely."

"No," I said. "He's been murdered. Stabbed to death!"

He let out a short, sibilant breath, looking at me with rapidly
dilating eyes: they ran me all over, as if he wondered whether I were
romancing.

"Come this way," I continued, leading him to the edge of the cliff.
"And mind how you walk on the sand--there are footmarks there, and I
don't want them interfered with till the police have examined them.
There!" I continued, as we reached the edge of the turf and came in
view of the beach. "You see?"

He gave another exclamation of surprise: then carefully followed me to
the dead man's side where he stood staring wonderingly at the stains
on the sand.

"He must have been dead for some hours," I whispered. "He's
stone-cold--and rigid. Now, this is murder! You live about here, no
doubt? Did you see or hear anything of this man in the neighbourhood
last night--or in the afternoon or evening?"

"I, sir?" he exclaimed. "No, sir--nothing!"

"I met him yesterday afternoon on the headlands between this and
Alnmouth," I remarked.

"I was with him for a while at the Mariner's Joy. He pulled out a big
handful of gold there, to pay for his lunch. The landlord warned him
against showing so much money. Now, before we do more, I'd like to
know if he's been murdered for the sake of robbery. You're doubtless
quicker of hand than I am--just slip your hand into that right-hand
pocket of his trousers, and see if you feel money there."

He took my meaning on the instant, and bending down, did what I
suggested. A smothered exclamation came from him.

"Money?" he said. "His pocket's full o' money!"

"Bring it out," I commanded.

He withdrew his hand; opened it; the palm was full of gold. The light
of the morning sun flashed on those coins as if in mockery. We both
looked at them--and then at each other with a sudden mutual
intelligence.

"Then it wasn't robbery!" I exclaimed. "So--"

He thrust back the gold, and pulling at a thick chain of steel which
lay across Quick's waistcoat, drew out a fine watch.

"Gold again, sir!" he said. "And a good 'un, that's never been bought
for less than thirty pound. No, it's not been robbery."

"No," I agreed, "and that makes it all the more mysterious. What's
your name?"

"Tarver, sir, at your service," he answered, as he rose from the dead
man's side. "Been on this estate a many years, sir."

"Well, Tarver," I said, "the only thing to be done is that I must go
back to the house and tell Mr. Raven what's happened, and send for the
police. Do you stay here--and if anybody comes along, be very careful
to keep them off those footmarks."

"Not likely that there'll be anybody, sir," he remarked. "As lonely a
bit of coast, this, as there is, hereabouts. What beats me," he added,
"is--what was he--and the man as did it--doing, here? There's naught
to come here for. And--it must ha' happened in the night, judging by
the looks of him."

"The whole thing's a profound mystery," I answered. "We shall hear a
lot more of it."

I left him standing by the dead man and went hurriedly away towards
Ravensdene Court. Glancing at my watch as I passed through the belt of
pine, I saw that it was already getting on to nine o'clock and
breakfast time. But this news of mine would have to be told: this was
no time for waiting or for ceremony. I must get Mr. Raven aside, at
once, and we must send for the nearest police officer, and--

Just then, fifty yards in front of me, I saw Mr. Cazalette vanishing
round the corner of the long yew-hedge, at the end nearest to the
house. So--he had evidently been back to the place whereat he had
hidden the stained linen, whatever it was? Coming up to that place a
moment later, and making sure that I was not observed, I looked in
amongst the twigs and foliage. The thing was gone.

This deepened the growing mystery more than ever. I began, against my
will, to piece things together. Mr. Cazalette, returning from the
beach, hides a blood-stained rag--I, going to the beach, find a
murdered man--coming back, I ascertain that Mr. Cazalette has already
removed what he had previously hidden. What connection was there--if
any at all--between Mr. Cazalette's actions and my discovery? To say
the least of it, the whole thing was queer, strange, and even
suspicious.

Then I caught sight of Mr. Cazalette again. He was on the terrace, in
front of the house, with Mr. Raven--they were strolling up and down,
before the open window of the morning room, chatting. And I was
thankful that Miss Raven was not with them, and that I saw no sign of
her near presence.

I determined to tell my gruesome news straight out--Mr. Raven, I felt
sure, was not the man to be startled by tidings of sudden death, and I
wanted, of set purpose, to see how his companion would take the
announcement. So, as I walked up the steps of the terrace, I loudly
called my host's name. He turned, saw from my expression that
something of moment had happened, and hurried toward me, Cazalette
trotting in his rear. I gave a warning look in in the direction of
the house and its open windows.

"I don't want to alarm Miss Raven," I said in a low voice, which I
purposely kept as matter-of-fact as possible. "Something has happened.
You know the man I was telling you of last night--Salter Quick? I
found his dead body, half-an-hour ago, on your beach. He has been
murdered--stabbed to the heart. Your gamekeeper, Tarver, is with him.
Had you not better send for the police?"

I carefully watched both men as I broke the news. Its effect upon them
was different in both cases. Mr. Raven started a little; exclaimed a
little: he was more wonder-struck than horrified. But Mr. Cazalette's
mask-like countenance remained immobile; only, a gleam of sudden,
almost pleased interest showed itself in his black, shrewd eyes.

"Aye?" he exclaimed. "So you found your man dead and murdered,
Middlebrook? Well, now, that's the very end that I was thinking the
fellow would come to! Not that I fancied it would be so soon, nor so
close at hand. On one's own doorstep so to speak. Interesting! Very
interesting!"

I was too much taken aback by his callousness to make any observation
on these sentiments; instead, I looked at Mr. Raven. He was evidently
too much surprised just then to pay any attention to his elder guest:
he motioned me to follow him.

"Come with me to the telephone," he said. "Dear, dear, what a very sad
thing. Of course, the poor fellow has been murdered for his money? You
said he'd a lot of gold on him."

"It's not been for robbery," I answered. "His money and his watch are
untouched. There's more in it than that."

He stared at me as if failing to comprehend.

"Some mystery?" he suggested.

"A very deep and lurid one, I think," said I. "Get the police out as
quickly as possible, and bid them bring a doctor."

"They'll bring their own police-surgeon," he remarked, "but we have a
medical man closer at hand. I'll ring him up, too. Yet--what can they
do?"

"Nothing--for him," I replied. "But they may be able to tell us at
what hour the thing took place. And that's important."

When we left the telephone we went to the morning-room, to get a
mouthful of food before going down to the beach. Miss Raven was
there--so was Cazalette. I saw at once that he had told her the news.
She was sitting behind her tea and coffee things, staring at him: he,
on his part, a cup of tea in one hand, a dry biscuit in the other, was
marching up and down the room sipping and munching, and holding forth,
in didactic fashion, on crime and detection. Miss Raven gave me a
glance as I slipped into a place at her side.

"You found this poor man?" she whispered. "How dreadful for you!"

"For him, too--and far more so," I said. "I didn't want you to know
until--later. Mr. Cazalette oughtn't to have told you."

She arched her eyebrows in the direction of the odd, still orating
figure.

"Oh!" she murmured. "He's no reverence for anything--life or death. I
believe he's positively enjoying this: he's been talking like that
ever since he came in and told me of it."

Mr. Raven and I made a very hurried breakfast and prepared to join
Tarver. The news of the murder had spread through the household; we
found two or three of the men-servants ready to accompany us. And Mr.
Cazalette was ready, too, and, I thought, more eager than any of the
rest. Indeed, when we set out from the house he led the way, across
the gardens and pleasure-grounds, along the yew-hedge (at which he
never so much as gave a glance) and through the belt of pine wood. At
its further extremity he glanced at Mr. Raven.

"From what Middlebrook says, this man must be lying in Kernwick Cove,"
he said. "Now, there's a footpath across the headlands and the field
above from Long Houghton village to that spot. Quick must have
followed it last night. But how came he to meet his murderer--or did
his murderer follow him? And what was Quick doing down here? Was he
directed here--or led here?"

Mr. Raven seemed to think these questions impossible of immediate
answer: his one anxiety at that moment appeared to be to set the
machinery of justice in motion. He was manifestly relieved when, as we
came to the open country behind the pines and firs, where a narrow
lane ran down to the sea, we heard the rattle of a light dog-cart and
turned to see the inspector of police and a couple of his men, who had
evidently hurried off at once on receiving the telephone message. With
them, seated by the inspector on the front seat of the trap, was a
professional-looking man who proved to be the police-surgeon.

We all trooped down to the beach, where Tarver was keeping his
unpleasant vigil. He had been taking a look round the immediate scene
of the murder, he said, during my absence, thinking that he might find
something in the way of a clue. But he had found nothing: there were
no signs of any struggle anywhere near. It seemed clear that two men
had crossed the land, descended the low cliffs, and that one had
fallen on the other as soon as the sands were reached--the footmarks
indicated as much. I pointed them out to the police, who examined them
carefully, and agreed with me that one set was undoubtedly made by the
boots of the dead man while the other was caused by the pressure of
some light-footed, lightly-shoed person. And there being nothing else
to be seen or done at that place, Salter Quick was lifted on to an
improvised stretcher which the servants had brought down from the
Court and carried by the way we had come to an outhouse in the
gardens, where the police-surgeon proceeded to make a more careful
examination of his body. He was presently joined in this by the
medical man of whom Mr. Raven had spoken--a Dr. Lorrimore, who came
hurrying up in his motor-car, and at once took a hand in his
fellow-practitioner's investigations. But there was little to
investigate--just as I had thought from the first. Quick had been
murdered by a knife-thrust from behind--dealt with evident knowledge
of the right place to strike, said the two doctors, for his heart had
been transfixed, and death must have been instantaneous.

Mr. Raven shrank away from these gruesome details, but Mr. Cazalette
showed the keenest interest in them, and would not be kept from the
doctor's elbows. He was pertinacious in questioning them.

"And what sort of a weapon was it, d'ye suppose that the assassin
used?" he asked. "That'll be an important thing to know, I'm
thinking."

"It might have been a seaman's knife," said the police-surgeon. "One
of those with a long, sharp blade."

"Or," said Dr. Lorrimore, "a stiletto--such as foreigners carry."

"Aye," remarked Mr. Cazalette, "or with an operating knife--such as
you medicos use. Any one of those fearsome things would serve, no
doubt. But we'll be doing more good, Middlebrook, just to know what
the police are finding in the man's pockets."

The police-inspector had got all Quick's belongings in a little heap.
They were considerable. Over thirty pounds in gold and silver. Twenty
pounds in notes in an old pocket-book. His watch--certainly a valuable
one. A pipe, a silver match-box, a tobacco-box of some metal, quaintly
chased and ornamented. Various other small matters--but, with one
exception, no papers or letters. The one exception was a slightly
torn, dirty envelope addressed in an ill-formed handwriting to Mr.
Salter Quick, care of Mr. Noah Quick, The Admiral Parker, Haulaway
Street, Devonport. There was no letter inside it, nor was there
another scrap of writing anywhere about the dead man's pockets.

The police allowed Mr. Cazalette to inspect these things according to
his fancy. It was very clear to me by that time that the old
gentleman had some taste for detective work, and I watched him with
curiosity while he carefully examined Quick's money, his watch (of
which he took particular notice, even going so far as to jot down its
number and the name of its maker on his shirt cuff), and the rest of
his belongings. But nothing seemed to excite his interest very deeply
until he began to finger the tobacco-box; then, indeed, his eyes
suddenly coruscated, and he turned to me almost excitedly.

"Middlebrook!" he whispered, edging me away from the others. "Do you
look here, my lad! D'ye see the inside of the lid of this box? There's
been something--a design, a plan, something of that sort,
anyway--scratched into it with the point of a nail, or a knife. Look
at the lines--and see, there's marks and there's figures! Now I'd like
to know what all that signifies? What are you going to do with all
these things?" he asked, turning suddenly on the inspector. "Take them
away?"

"They'll all be carefully sealed up and locked up till the inquest,
sir," replied the inspector. "No doubt the dead man's relatives will
claim them."

Mr. Cazalette laid down the tobacco-box, left the place, and hurried
away in the direction of the house. Within a few minutes he came
hurrying back, carrying a camera. He went up to the inspector with an
almost wheedling air.

"Ye'll just indulge an old man's fancy?" he said, placatingly.
"There's some queer marking inside the lid of that bit of a box that
the poor man kept his tobacco in. I'd like to take a photograph of
them. Man! you don't know that an examination of them mightn't be
useful."




CHAPTER V

THE NEWS FROM DEVONPORT


The police-inspector, a somewhat silent, stolid sort of man, looked
down from his superior height on Mr. Cazalette's eager face with a
half-bored, half-tolerant expression; he had already seen a good deal
of the old gentleman's fussiness.

"What is it about the box?" he demanded.

"Certain marks on it--inside the lid--that I'd like to photograph,"
answered Mr. Cazalette. "They're small and faint, but if I get a good
negative of them I can enlarge it. And I say again, you don't know
what one mightn't find out--any little detail is of value in a case of
this sort."

The inspector picked up the metal tobacco-box from where it lay amidst
Quick's belongings and looked inside the lid. It was very plain that
he saw nothing there but some--to him meaningless scratches and he put
the thing into Mr. Cazalette's hands with an air of indifference.

"I see no objection," he said. "Let's have it back when you've done
with it. We shall have to exhibit these personal properties before the
coroner."

Mr. Cazalette carried his camera and the tobacco-box outside the shed
in which the dead man's body lay and began to be busy. A gardener's
potting-table stood against the wall; on this, backed by a black
cloth which he had brought from the house, he set up the box and
prepared to photograph it. It was evident that he attached great
importance to what he was doing.

"I shall take two or three negatives of this, Middlebrook," he
observed, consequentially. "I'm an expert in photography, and I've got
an enlarging apparatus in my room. Before the day's out, I shall show
you something."

Personally, I had seen no more in the inner lid of the tobacco-box
than the inspector seemed to have seen--a few lines and scratches,
probably caused by thumb or finger-nail--and I left Mr. Cazalette to
his self-imposed labours and rejoined the doctors and the police who
were discussing the next thing to be done. That Quick had been
murdered there was no doubt; there would have to be an inquest, of
course, and for that purpose his body would have to be removed to the
nearest inn, a house on the cross-roads just beyond Ravensdene Court;
search would have to be set up at once for suspicious characters, and
Noah Quick, of Devonport, would have to be communicated with.

All this the police took in hand, and I saw that Mr. Raven was
heartily relieved when he heard that the dead man would be removed
from his premises and that the inquest would not be held there. Ever
since I had first broken the news to him, he had been upset and
nervous: I could see that he was one of those men who dislike fuss and
publicity. He looked at me with a sort of commiseration when the
police questioned me closely about my knowledge of Salter Quick's
movements on the previous day, and especially about his visit to the
Mariner's Joy.

"Yet," said I, finishing my account of that episode, "it is very
evident that the man was not murdered for the sake of robbery, seeing
that his money and his watch were found on him untouched."

The inspector shook his head.

"I'm not so sure," he remarked. "There's one thing that's certain--the
man's clothes had been searched. Look here!"

He turned to Quick's garments, which had been removed, preparatory to
laying out the body in decent array for interment, and picked up the
waistcoat. Within the right side, made in the lining, there was a
pocket, secured by a stout button. That pocket had been turned inside
out; so, too, had a pocket in the left hip of the trousers,
corresponding to that on the right in which Quick had carried the
revolver that he had shown to us at the inn. The waistcoat was a
thick, quilted affair--its lining, here and there, had been ripped
open by a knife. And the lining of the man's hat had been torn out,
too, and thrust roughly into place again: clearly, whoever killed him
had searched for something.

"It wasn't money they were after," observed the inspector, "but there
was an object. He'd that on him that his murderer was anxious to get.
And the fact that the murderer left all this gold untouched is the
worst feature of the affair--from our point of view."

"Why, now?" inquired Mr. Raven.

"Because, sir, it shows that the murderer, whoever he was, had plenty
of money on him," replied the inspector grimly. "And as he had, he'd
have little difficulty in getting away. Probably he got an early
morning train, north or south, and is hundreds of miles off by this
time. But we must do our best--and we'll get to work now."

Leaving everything to the police--obviously with relief and
thankfulness--Mr. Raven retired from the scene, inviting the two
medical men and the inspector into the house with him, to take, as he
phrased, a little needful refreshment; he sent out a servant to
minister to the constables in the same fashion. Leaving him and his
guests in the morning-room and refusing Mr. Cazalette's invitation to
join him in his photographic enterprise, I turned into the big hall
and there found Miss Raven. I was glad to find her alone; the mere
sight of her, in her morning freshness, was welcome after the gruesome
business in which I had just been engaged. I think she saw something
of my thoughts in my face, for she turned to me sympathetically.

"What a very unfortunate thing that this should have happened at the
very beginning of your visit!" she exclaimed. "Didn't it give you an
awful shock, to find that poor fellow?--so unexpectedly!"

"It was certainly not a pleasant experience," I answered. "But--I was
not quite as surprised as you might think."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because--I can't explain it, quite--I felt, yesterday, that the man
was running risks by showing his money as foolishly as he did," I
replied. "And, of course, when I found him, I thought he'd been
murdered for his money."

"And yet he wasn't!" she said. "For you say it was all found on him.
What an extraordinary mystery! Is there no clue? I suppose he must
really have been killed by that man who was spoken of at the inn? You
think they met?"

"To tell you the truth," I answered, "at present I don't know what to
think--except that this is merely a chapter in some mystery--an
extraordinary one, as you remark. We shall hear more. And, in the
meantime--a much pleasanter thing--won't you show me round the house?
Mr. Raven is busy with the police-inspector and the doctors, and--I'm
anxious to know what the extent of my labours may be."

She at once acquiesced in this proposition, and we began to inspect
the accumulations of the dead-and-gone master of Ravensdene Court. As
his successor had remarked in his first letter to me, Mr. John
Christopher Raven, though obviously a great collector, had certainly
not been a great exponent of system and order--except in the library
itself, where all his most precious treasures were stored in tall,
locked book-presses, his gatherings were lumped together anyhow and
anywhere, all over the big house--the north wing was indeed a
lumber-house--he appeared to have bought books, pamphlets, and
manuscripts by the cart-load, and it was very plain to me, as an
expert, that the greater part of his possessions of these sorts had
never even been examined. Before Miss Raven and I had spent an hour in
going from one room to another I had arrived at two definite
conclusions--one, that the dead man's collection of books and papers
was about the most heterogeneous I had ever set eyes on, containing
much of great value and much of none whatever; the other, that it
would take me a long time to make a really careful and proper
examination of it, and longer still to arrange it in proper order.
Clearly, I should have to engage Mr. Raven in a strictly business
talk, and find out what his ideas were in regard to putting his big
library on a proper footing. Mr. Raven at last joined us, in one of
the much-encumbered rooms. With him was the doctor, Lorrimore, whom he
had mentioned to me as living near Ravensdene Court. He introduced him
to his niece, with, I thought, some signs of pleasure; then to me,
remarking that we had already seen each other in different
surroundings--now we could foregather in pleasanter ones.

"Dr. Lorrimore," he continued, glancing from me to Miss Raven and then
to the doctor with a smile that was evidently designed to put us all
on a friendly footing, "Dr. Lorrimore and I have been having quite a
good talk. It turns out that he has spent a long time in India. So we
have a lot in common."

"How very nice for you, Uncle Francis!" said Miss Raven. "I know
you've been bored to death with having no one you could talk to about
curries and brandy-pawnees and things--now Dr. Lorrimore will come and
chat with you. Were you long in India, Dr. Lorrimore?"

"Twelve years," answered the doctor. "I came home just a year ago."

"To bury yourself in these wilds!" remarked Miss Raven. "Doesn't it
seem quite out of the world here--after that?"

Dr. Lorrimore glanced at Mr. Raven and showed a set of very white
teeth in a meaning smile. He was a tall, good-looking man, dark of eye
and hair; moustached and bearded; apparently under forty years of
age--yet, at each temple, there was the faintest trace of silvery
grey. A rather notable man, too, I thought, and one who was evidently
scrupulous about his appearance--yet his faultlessly cut frock suit of
raven black, his glossy linen, and smart boots looked more fitted to a
Harley Street consulting-room than to the Northumbrian cottages and
farmsteads amongst which his lot must necessarily be cast. He
transferred his somewhat gleaming, rather mechanical smile to Miss
Raven.

"On the contrary," he said in a quiet almost bantering tone, "this
seems--quite gay. I was in a part of India where one had to travel
long distances to see a white patient--and one doesn't count the rest.
And--I bought this practice, knowing it to be one that would not make
great demands on my time, so that I could devote myself a good deal to
certain scientific pursuits in which I am deeply interested. No!--I
don't feel out of the world, Miss Raven, I assure you."

"He has promised to put in some of his spare time with me, when he
wants company," said Mr. Raven. "We shall have much in common."

"Dark secrets of a dark country!" remarked Dr. Lorrimore, with a sly
glance at Miss Raven. "Over our cheroots!"

Then, excusing himself from Mr. Raven's pressing invitation to stay to
lunch, he took himself off, and my host, his niece, and myself
continued our investigations. These lasted until the lunch hour--they
afforded us abundant scope for conversation, too, and kept us from
any reference to the grim tragedy of the early morning.

Mr. Cazalette made no appearance at lunch. I heard a footman inform
Miss Raven, in answer to her inquiry, that he had just taken Mr.
Cazalette's beef-tea to his room and that he required nothing else.
And I did not see him again until late that afternoon, when, as the
rest of us were gathered about the tea-table in the hall, before a
cheery fire, he suddenly appeared, a smile of grim satisfaction on his
queer old face. He took his usual cup of tea and dry biscuit and sat
down in silence. But by that time I was getting inquisitive.

"Well, Mr. Cazalette," I said, "have you brought your photographic
investigations to any successful conclusion?"

"Yes, Mr. Cazalette," chimed in Miss Raven, whom I had told of the old
man's odd fancy about the scratches on the lid of the tobacco-box.
"We're dying to know if you've found out anything. Have you--and what
is it?"

He gave us a knowing glance over the rim of his tea-cup.

"Aye!" he said. "Young folks are full of curiosity. But I'm not going
to say what I've discovered, nor how far my investigations have gone.
Ye must just die a bit more, Miss Raven, and maybe when ye're on the
point of demise I'll resuscitate ye with the startling news of my
great achievements."

I knew by that time that when Mr. Cazalette relapsed into his native
Scotch he was most serious, and that his bantering tone was assumed as
a cloak. It was clear that we were not going to get anything out of
him just then. But Mr. Raven tried another tack, fishing for
information.

"You really think those marks were made of a purpose, Cazalette?" he
suggested. "You think they were intentional?"

"I'll not say anything at present," answered Mr. Cazalette. "The
experiment is in course of process. But I'll say this, as a student of
this sort of thing--yon murderer was far from the ordinary."

Miss Raven shuddered a little.

"I hope the man who did it is not hanging about!" she said.

Mr. Cazalette shook his head with a knowing gesture.

"Ye need have no fear of that, lassie!" he remarked. "The man that did
it had put a good many miles between himself and his victim long
before Middlebrook there made his remarkable discovery."

"Now, how do you know that, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, feeling a bit
restive under the old fellow's cock-sureness. "Isn't that guess-work?"

"No!" said he. "It's deduction--and common-sense. Mine's a nature
that's full of both those highly admirable qualities, Middlebrook."

He went away then, as silently as he had come. And when, a few minutes
later, I, too, went off to some preliminary work that I had begun in
the library, I began to think over the first events of the morning,
and to wonder if I ought not to ask Mr. Cazalette for some explanation
of the incident of the yew-hedge. He had certainly secreted a piece of
blood-stained, mud-discoloured linen in that hedge for an hour or so.
Why? Had it anything to do with the crime? Had he picked it up on the
beach when he went for his dip? Why was he so secretive about it? And
why, if it was something of moment, had he not carried it straight to
his own room in the house, instead of hiding it in the hedge while he
evidently went back to the house and made his toilet? The circumstance
was extraordinary, to say the least of it.

But on reflection I determined to hold my tongue and abide my time.
For anything I knew, Mr. Cazalette might have cut one of his feet on
the sharp stones on the beach, used his handkerchief to staunch the
wound, thrown it away into the hedge, and then, with a touch of native
parsimony, have returned to recover the discarded article. Again, he
might be in possession of some clue, to which his tobacco-box
investigations were ancillary--altogether, it was best to leave him
alone. He was clearly deeply interested in the murder of Salter Quick,
and I had gathered from his behaviour and remarks that this sort of
thing--investigation of crime--had a curious fascination for him. Let
him, then, go his way; something, perhaps, might come of it. One thing
was very sure, and the old man had grasped it readily--this crime was
no ordinary one.

As the twilight approached, making my work in the library impossible,
and having no wish to go on with it by artificial light, I went out
for a walk. The fascination which is invariably exercised on any of us
by such affairs led me, half-unconsciously, to the scene of the
murder. The tide, which had been up in the morning, was now out,
though just beginning to turn again, and the beach, with its masses
of bare rock and wide-spreading deposits of sea-weed, looked bleak and
desolate in the uncertain grey light. But it was not without life--two
men were standing near the place where I had come upon Salter Quick's
dead body. Going nearer to them, I recognized one as Claigue, the
landlord of the Mariner's Joy. He recognized me at the same time, and
touched his cap with a look that was alike knowing and confidential.

"So it came about as I'd warned him, sir!" he said, without preface.
"I told him how it would be. You heard me! A man carrying gold about
him like that!--and showing it to all and sundry. Why, he was asking
for trouble!"

"The gold was found on him," I answered. "And his watch and other
things. He wasn't murdered for his property."

Claigue uttered a sharp exclamation. He was evidently taken aback.

"You hadn't heard that, then?" I suggested.

"No," he replied. "I hadn't heard that, sir. Bless me! his money and
valuables found on him. No! we've heard naught except that he was
found murdered, here, early this morning. Of course, I concluded that
it had been for the sake of his money--that he'd been pulling it out
in some public-house or other, and had been followed. Dear me! that
puts a different complexion on things. Now, what's the meaning of it,
in your opinion, sir?"

"I have none," I answered. "The whole thing's a mystery--so far. But,
as you live hereabouts, perhaps you can suggest something. The
doctors are of the opinion that he was murdered--here--yesterday
evening: that his body had been lying here, just above high-water
mark, since, probably, eight or nine o'clock last night. Now, what
could he be doing down at this lonely spot? He went inland when he
left your house."

The man who was with Claigue offered an explanation. There was, he
said, a coast village or two further along the headlands; it would be
a short cut to them to follow the beach.

"Yes," said I, "but that would argue that he knew the lie of the land.
And, according to his own account, he was a complete stranger."

"Aye!" broke in Claigue. "But he wasn't alone, sir, when he came here!
He'd fallen in with somebody, somewhere, that brought him down
here--and left him, dead. And--who was it?"

There was no answering that question, and presently we parted, Claigue
and his companion going back towards his inn, and I to Ravensdene
Court. The dusk had fallen by that time, and the house was lighted
when I came back. Entering by the big hall, I saw Mr. Raven, Mr.
Cazalette, and the police-inspector standing in close conversation by
the hearth. Mr. Raven beckoned me to approach.

"Here's some most extraordinary news from Devonport--where Quick came
from," he said. "The inspector wired to the police there this morning,
telling them to communicate with his brother, whose name, you know,
was found on him. He's had a wire from them this afternoon--read it!"

He turned to the inspector, who placed a telegram in my hand. It ran
thus:

     "Noah Quick was found murdered at lonely spot on riverside
     near Saltash at an early hour this morning. So far no clue
     whatever to murderer."




CHAPTER VI

SECRET THEFT


I handed the telegram back to the police-inspector with a glance that
took in the faces of all three men. It was evident that they were
thinking the same thought that had flashed into my own mind. The
inspector put it into words.

"This," he said in a low voice, tapping the bit of flimsy paper with
his finger, "this throws a light on the affair of this morning. No
ordinary crime, that, gentlemen! When two brothers are murdered on the
same night, at places hundreds of miles apart, it signifies something
out of the common. Somebody has had an interest in getting rid of both
men!"

"Wasn't this Noah Quick mentioned in some paper you found on Salter
Quick?" I asked.

"An envelope," replied the inspector. "We have it, of course.
Landlord--so I took it to mean--of the Admiral Parker, Haulaway
Street, Devonport. I wired to the police authorities there, telling
them of Salter Quick's death and asking them to communicate at once
with Noah. Their answer is--this!"

"It'll be at Devonport that the secret lies," observed Mr. Cazalette
suddenly. "Aye--that's where you'll be seeking for news!"

"We've got none here--about our affair," remarked the inspector. "I
set all my available staff to work as soon as I got back to
headquarters this forenoon, and up to the time I set off to show you
this, Mr. Raven, we'd learned nothing. It's a queer thing, but we
haven't come across anybody who saw this man after he left you, Mr.
Middlebrook, yesterday afternoon. You say he turned inland, towards
Denwick, when he left you after coming out of Claigue's place--well,
my men have inquired in every village and at every farmstead and
wayside cottage within an area of ten or twelve miles, and we haven't
heard a word of him. Where did he go? Whom did he come across?"

"I should say that's obvious," said I. "He came across the man of whom
he heard at the Mariner's Joy--the man who, like himself, was asking
for information about an old churchyard in which people called
Netherfield are buried."

"We've heard all about that from the man who told him--Jim Gelthwaite,
the drover," replied the inspector. "He's told us of his meeting with
such a man, a night or two ago. But we can't get any information on
that point, either. Nobody else seems to have seen that man, any more
than they've seen Salter Quick!"

"I suppose there are places along this coast where a man might hide?"
I suggested.

"Caves, now?" put in Mr. Cazalette.

"There may be," admitted the inspector. "Of course I shall have the
coast searched."

"Aye, but ye'll not find anything--now!" affirmed Mr. Cazalette. "Yon
man, that Jim the drover told of, he might be hiding here or there in
a cave, or some out o' the way place, of which there's plenty in this
part, till he did the deed, but when it was once done, he'd be away!
The railway's not that far, and there's early morning trains going
north and south."

"We've been at the railway folk, at all the near stations," remarked
the inspector. "They could tell nothing. It seems to me," he
continued, turning to Mr. Raven, and nodding sidewise at Mr.
Cazalette, "that this gentleman hits the nail on the head when he says
it's to Devonport that we'll be turning for explanations--I'm coming
to the conclusion that the whole affair has been engineered from that
quarter."

"Aye!" said Mr. Cazalette, laconically confident. "Ye'll learn more
about Salter when ye hear more about Noah. And it's a very bonny
mystery and with an uncommonly deep bottom to it!"

"I've wired to Devonport for full particulars about the affair there,"
said the inspector. "No doubt I shall have them by the time our
inquest opens tomorrow."

I forget whether these particulars had reached him, when, next
morning, Mr. Raven, Mr. Cazalette, the gamekeeper Tarver, and myself
walked across the park to the wayside inn to which Salter Quick's body
had been removed, and where the coroner was to hold his inquiry. I
remember, however, that nothing was done that morning beyond a merely
formal opening of the proceedings, and that a telegram was received
from the police at Devonport in which it was stated that they were
unable to find out if the two brothers had any near relations--no one
there knew of any. Altogether, I think, nothing was revealed that day
beyond what we knew already, and so far as I remember matters, no
light was thrown on either murder for some time. But I was so much
interested in the mystery surrounding them that I carefully collected
all the newspaper accounts concerning the murder at Saltash and that
at Ravensdene Court, and pasted the clippings into a book, and from
these I can now give something like a detailed account of all that was
known of Salter and Noah Quick previous to the tragedies of that
spring.

Somewhere about the end of the year 1910, Noah Quick, hailing,
evidently, from nowhere in particular, but, equally evidently, being
in possession of plenty of cash, became licensee of a small tavern
called the Admiral Parker, in a back street in Devonport. It was a
fully-licensed house, and much frequented by seamen. Noah Quick was a
thick-set, sturdy, middle-aged man, reserved, taciturn, very strict in
his attention to business; a steady, sober man, keen on money matters.
He was a bachelor, keeping an elderly woman as housekeeper, a couple
of stout women servants, a barmaid, and a potman. His house was
particularly well-conducted; it was mentioned at the inquest on him
that the police had never once had any complaint in reference to it,
and that Noah, who had to deal with a rather rough class of customers,
was peculiarly adept in keeping order--one witness, indeed, said that
having had opportunities of watching him, he had formed the opinion
that Noah, before going into the public-house business, had held some
position of authority and was accustomed to obedience. Everything
seemed to be going very well with him and the Admiral Parker, when,
in February, 1912, his brother, Salter Quick, made his appearance in
Devonport.

Nobody knew anything about Salter Quick, except that he was believed
to have come to Devonport from Wapping or Rotherhithe, or somewhere
about those Thames-side quarters. He was very like his brother in
appearance, and in character, except that he was more sociable, and
more talkative. He took up his residence at the Admiral Parker, and he
and Noah evidently got on together very well: they were even
affectionate in manner toward each other. They were often seen in
Devonport and in Plymouth in company, but those who knew them best at
this time noted that they never paid visits to, nor received visits
from, any one coming within the category of friends or relations. And
one man, giving evidence at the inquest on Noah Quick, said that he
had some recollection that Salter, in a moment of confidence, had once
told him that he and Noah were orphans, and hadn't a blood-relation in
the world.

According to all that was brought out, matters went quite smoothly and
pleasantly at the Admiral Parker until the 5th of March, 1912--three
days, it will be observed, before I myself left London for Ravensdene
Court. On that date, Salter Quick, who had a banking account at a
Plymouth bank (to which he had been introduced by Noah, who also
banked there), cashed a check for sixty pounds. That was in the
morning--in the early afternoon, he went away, remarking to the
barmaid at his brother's inn that he was first going to London and
then north. Noah accompanied him to the railway station. As far as
any one knew, Salter was not burdened by any luggage, even by a
handbag.

After he had gone, things went on just as usual at the Admiral Parker.
Neither the housekeeper, nor the barmaid, nor the potman, could
remember that the place was visited by any suspicious characters, nor
that its landlord showed any signs of having any trouble or any
extraordinary business matters. Everything was as it should be, when,
on the evening of the 9th of March (the very day on which I met Salter
Quick on the Northumbrian coast), Noah told his housekeeper and
barmaid that he had to go over to Saltash, to see a man on business,
and should be back about closing-time. He went away about seven
o'clock, but he was not back at closing-time. The potman sat up for
him until midnight: he was not back then. And none of his people at
the Admiral Parker heard any more of him until just after breakfast
next morning, when the police came and told them that their employer's
body had been found at a lonely spot on the bank of the river a little
above Saltash, and that he had certainly been murdered.

There were some points of similarity between the murders of Salter
Quick and Noah Quick. The movements and doings of each man were
traceable up to a certain point, after which nothing whatever could be
discovered respecting them. As regards Noah Quick he had crossed the
river between Keyham and Saltash by the ferry-boat, landing just
beneath the great bridge which links Devon with Cornwall. It was then
nearly dark, but he was seen and spoken to by several men who knew him
well. He was seen, too, to go up the steep street towards the head of
the queer old village: there he went into one of the inns, had a glass
of whisky at the bar, exchanged a word or two with some men sitting in
the parlour, and after awhile, glancing at his watch, went out--and
was never seen again alive. His dead body was found next morning at a
lonely spot on an adjacent creek, by a fisherman--like Salter, he had
been stabbed, and in similar fashion. And as in Salter's case, robbery
of money and valuables had not been the murderer's object. Noah Quick,
when found, had money on him, gold, silver; he was also wearing a gold
watch and chain and a diamond ring; all these things were untouched,
as if the murderer had felt contemptuous of them. But here again was a
point of similarity in the two crimes--Noah Quick's pocket's had been
turned out; the lining of his waistcoat had been slashed and slit; his
thick reefer jacket had been torn off him and subjected to a similar
search--its lining was cut to pieces, and it and his overcoat were
found flung carelessly over the body. Close by lay his hard felt
hat--the lining had been torn out.

This, according to the evidence given at the inquests and to the facts
collected by the police at the places concerned, was all that came
out. There was not the slightest clue in either case. No one could say
what became of Salter Quick after he left me outside the Mariner's
Joy; no one knew where Noah Quick went when he walked out of the
Saltash inn into the darkness. At each inquest a verdict of wilful
murder against some person or persons unknown was returned, and the
respective coroners uttered some platitudes about coincidence and
mystery and all the rest of it. But from all that had transpired it
seemed to me that there were certain things to be deduced, and I find
that I tabulated them at the time, writing them down at the end of the
newspaper clippings, as follows:

1. Salter and Noah Quick were in possession of some secret.

2. They were murdered by men who wished to get possession of it for
themselves.

3. The actual murderers were probably two members of a gang.

4. Gang--if a gang--and murderers were at large, and, if they had
secured possession of the secret would be sure to make use of it.

Out of this arose the question--what was the secret? Something, I had
no doubt whatever, that related to money. But what, and how? I
exercised my speculative faculties a good deal at the time over this
matter, and I could not avoid wondering about Mr. Cazalette and the
yew-hedge affair. He never mentioned it; I was afraid and nervous
about telling him what I had seen. Nor for some time did he mention
his tobacco-box labours--indeed, I don't remember that he mentioned
them directly at all. But, about the time that the inquests on the two
murdered men came to an end, I observed that Mr. Cazalette, most of
whose time was devoted to his numismatic work, was spending his
leisure in turning over whatever books he could come across at
Ravensdene Court which related to local history and topography; he was
also studying old maps, charts and the like. Also, he got from London
the latest Ordnance Map. I saw him studying that with deep attention.
Yet he said nothing until one day, coming across me in the library,
alone, he suddenly plumped me with a question.

"Middlebrook!" said he, "the name which that poor man mentioned to you
as you talked with him on the cliff was--Netherfield?"

"Netherfield," said I. "That was it--Netherfield."

"He said there were Netherfields buried hereabouts?" he asked.

"Just so--in some churchyard or other," I answered. "What of it, Mr.
Cazalette?"

He helped himself to a pinch of snuff, as if to assist his thoughts.

"Well," said he presently, "and it's a queer thing that at the time of
the inquest nobody ever thought of inquiring if there is such a
churchyard and such graves."

"Why didn't you suggest it?" I asked.

"I'd rather find it out for myself," said he, with a knowing look.
"And if you want to know, I've been trying to do so. But I've looked
through every local history there is--and I think the late John
Christopher Raven collected every scrap of printed stuff relating to
this corner of the country that's ever left a press--and I can't find
any reference to such a name."

"Parish registers?" I suggested.

"Aye, I thought of that," he said. "Some of 'em have been printed, and
I've consulted those that have, without result. And, Middlebrook, I'm
more than ever convinced that yon dead man knew what he was talking
about, and that there's dead and gone Netherfields lying somewhere in
this quarter, and that the secret of his murder is, somehow, to be
found in their ancient tombs! Aye!"

He took another big pinch of snuff, and looked at me as if to find out
whether or no I agreed with him. Then I let out a question.

"Mr. Cazalette, have you found out anything from your photographic
work on that tobacco-box lid?" I asked. "You thought you might."

Much to my astonishment, he turned and shuffled away.

"I'm not through with that matter, yet," he answered.
"It's--progressing."

I told Miss Raven of this little conversation. She and I were often
together in the library; we often discussed the mystery of the
murders.

"What was there, really, on the lid of the tobacco-box?" she asked.
"Anything that could actually arouse curiosity?"

"I think Mr. Cazalette exaggerated their importance," I replied, "but
there were certainly some marks, scratches, which seemed to have been
made by design."

"And what," she asked again, "did Mr. Cazalette think they might
mean?"

"Heaven knows!" I answered. "Some deep and dark clue to Quick's
murder, I suppose."

"I wish I had seen the tobacco-box," she remarked. "Interesting,
anyway."

"That's easy enough," said I. "The police have it--and all the rest of
Quick's belongings. If we walked over to the police-station, the
inspector would willingly show it to you."

I saw that this proposition attracted her--she was not beyond feeling
something of the fascination which is exercised upon some people by
the inspection of the relics of strange crimes.

"Let us go, then," she said. "This afternoon?"

I had a mind, myself, to have another look at that tobacco-box; Mr.
Cazalette's hints about it, and his mysterious secrecy regarding his
photographic experiments, made me inquisitive. So after lunch that day
Miss Raven and I walked across country to the police-station, where we
were shown into the presence of the inspector, who, in the midst of
his politeness, frankly showed his wonder at our pilgrimage.

"We have come with an object," said I, giving him an informing glance.
"Miss Raven, like most ladies, is not devoid of curiosity. She wishes
to see that metal tobacco-box which was found on Salter Quick."

The inspector laughed.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "The thing that the old gentleman--what's his
name? Mr. Cazalette?--was so keen about photographing. Why, I don't
know--I saw nothing but two or three surface scratches inside the lid.
Has he discovered anything?"

"That," I answered, "is only known to Mr. Cazalette himself. He
preserves a strict silence on that point. He is very mysterious about
the matter. It is his secrecy, and his mystery, that makes Miss Raven
inquisitive."

"Well," remarked the inspector, indulgently, "it's a curiosity that
can very easily be satisfied. I've got all Quick's belongings
here--just as they were put together after being exhibited before the
coroner." He unlocked a cupboard and pointed to two bundles--one, a
large one, was done up in linen; the other, a small one, in a wrapping
of canvas. "That," he continued, pointing to the linen-covered
package, "contains his clothing; this, his effects: his money, watch
and chain, and so on. It's sealed, as you see, but we can put fresh
seals on after breaking these."

"Very kind of you to take so much trouble," said Miss Raven. "All to
satisfy a mere whim."

The inspector assured her that it was no trouble, and broke the seals
of the small, carefully-wrapped package. There, neatly done up, were
the dead man's effects, even down to his pipe and pouch. His money was
there, notes, gold, silver, copper; there was a stump of lead-pencil
and a bit of string; every single thing found upon him had been kept.
But the tobacco-box was not there.

"I--I don't see it!" exclaimed the inspector. "How's this?"

He turned the things over again, and yet again--there was no
tobacco-box. And at that, evidently vexed and perplexed, he rang a
bell and asked for a particular constable, who presently entered. The
inspector indicated the various properties.

"Didn't you put these things together when the inquest was over?" he
demanded. "They were all lying on the table at the inquest--we showed
them there. I told you to put them up and bring them here and seal
them."

"I did, sir," answered the man. "I put together everything that was on
the table, at once. The package was never out of my hands till I got
it here, and sealed it. Sergeant Brown and myself counted the money,
sir."

"The money is all right," observed the inspector. "But there's a metal
box--a tobacco-box--missing. Do you remember it?"

"Can't say that I do, sir," replied the constable. "I packed up
everything that was there."

The inspector nodded a dismissal; when we were alone again, he turned
to Miss Raven and me with a queer expression.

"That box has been abstracted at the inquest!" he said, "Now then!--by
whom?--and why?"




CHAPTER VII

YELLOWFACE


It was very evident that the inspector was considerably puzzled, not
to say upset, by the disappearance of the tobacco-box, and I fancied
that I saw the real reason of his discomfiture. He had poohpoohed Mr.
Cazalette's almost senile eagerness about the thing, treating his
request as of no importance; now he suddenly discovered that somebody
had conceived a remarkable interest in the tobacco-box and had
cleverly annexed it--under his very eyes--and he was angry with
himself for his lack of care and perception. I was not indisposed to
banter him a little.

"The second of your questions might be easily answered," I said. "The
thing has been appropriated because somebody believes, as Mr.
Cazalette evidently does, or did, that there may be a clue in those
scratches, or marks, on the inside of the lid. But as to who it was
that believed this, and managed to secrete the box--that's a far
different matter!"

He was thinking, and presently he nodded his head.

"I can call to mind everybody who sat round that table, where these
things were laid out," he remarked, confidently. "There were two or
three officials, like myself. There was our surgeon and Dr. Lorrimore.
Two or three of the country gentlemen--all magistrates; all well known
to me. And at the foot of the table there were a couple of reporters:
I know them, too, well enough. Now, who, out of that lot, would be
likely to steal--for that's what it comes to--this tobacco-box? A
thing that had scarcely been mentioned--if at all--during the
proceedings!"

"Well, I don't know," I remarked. "But you're forgetting one thing,
inspector. That's--curiosity!"

He looked at me blankly--clearly, he did not understand. Neither, I
saw, did Miss Raven.

"There are some people," I continued, "who have an itching--perhaps a
morbid--desire to collect and possess relics, mementoes of crime and
criminals. I know a man who has a cabinet filled with such
things--very proud of the fact that he owns a flute which once
belonged to Charles Pease; a purse that was found on Frank Muller; a
reputed riding-whip of Dick Turpin's and the like. How do you know
that one or other of the various men who sat round the table you're
talking of hasn't some such mania and appropriated the tobacco-box as
a memento of the Ravensdene Court mania?"

"I don't know," he replied. "But I don't think it likely: I know the
lot of them, more or less, and I think they've all too much sense."

"All the same, the thing's gone," I remarked. "And you'll excuse me
for saying it--you're a bit concerned by its disappearance."

"I am!" he said, frankly. "And I'll tell you why. It's just because no
particular attention was drawn to it at the inquest. So far as I remember
it was barely mentioned--if it was, it was only as one item, an
insignificant one, amongst more important things; the money, the watch and
chain, and so on. But--somebody--somebody there!--considered it of so
much importance as to appropriate it. Therefore, it is--just what I
thought it wasn't--a matter of moment. I ought to have taken more care
about it, from the time Mr. Cazalette first drew my attention to those
marks inside the lid."

"You're sure that it was on the table at the inquest?" I suggested.

"I'm sure of that," he replied with conviction, "for I distinctly
remember laying out the various objects myself. When the inquest was
over, I told the man you've just seen to put them all together and to
seal the package when he brought it back here. No--that tobacco-box
was picked up--stolen--off that table."

"Then there's more in the matter than lies on the surface," said I.

"Evidently," said he. He looked dubiously from Miss Raven to myself.
"I suppose the old gentleman--Mr. Cazalette--is to be--trusted? I
mean--you don't think that he's found out anything with his
photography, and is keeping it dark?"

"Miss Raven and myself," I replied, "know nothing whatever of Mr.
Cazalette except that he is a famous authority on coins and medals, a
very remarkable person for his age, and Mr. Raven's guest. As to his
keeping the result of his investigations dark, I should say that no
one could do that sort of thing better!"

"Aye, so I guessed," muttered the inspector. "I wish he'd tell us,
though, if he has discovered anything. But I suppose he'll take his
time?"

"Precisely," said I. "Men like Mr. Cazalette do. Time is regarded by
men of his peculiar temperament in somewhat different fashion to the
way in which we younger folk regard it--having come a long way along
the road of life, they refuse to be hurried. Well--I suppose you'll
make some inquiries about that box? By the way, if it's not a
professional secret, have you heard any more of the affair at
Saltash?"

"They haven't found out another thing," he answered, with a shake of
the head. "That's as big a mystery as this!

"What do you think, from your standpoint, of the two affairs?" I
asked, more for the delectation of Miss Raven than for my own
satisfaction--I knew she was curious about the double mystery. "Have
you formed any conclusion?"

"I've thought a great deal about it," he replied. "It seems to me that
the two brothers, Salter and Noah Quick, were men who had what's
commonly called a past, and that there was some strange secret in
it--probably one of money. I think that in their last days they were
tracked, shadowed, whatever you like to call it, by some old
associates of theirs, who murdered them in the expectation of getting
hold of something--papers, or what not. And what I would like to know
is--why did Salter Quick come down here, to this particular bit of the
North Country?"

"He said--to look for the graves of his ancestors on the mother's
side, the Netherfields," I answered.

"Aye, well!" remarked the inspector, almost triumphantly. "I know he
did--but I've had the most careful inquires made. There isn't such a
name in any churchyard of these parts. There isn't such a name in any
parish register between Alnmouth Bay and Fenham Flats--and that's a
pretty good stretch of country! I set to work on those investigations
as soon as you told me about your first meeting with Salter Quick, and
every beneficed clergyman and parish clerk in the district--and
further afield--has been at work. The name of Netherfield is
absolutely unknown--in the past or present."

"And yet," suddenly broke in Miss Raven, "it was not Salter Quick
alone who was seeking the graves of the Netherfields! There was
another man."

The inspector gave her an appreciative look.

"The most mysterious feature of the whole case!" he exclaimed. "You're
right, Miss Raven! There was another man--asking for the same
information. Who was he! Where is he? If only I could clap a hand on
him----"

"You think you'd be clapping a hand on Salter Quick's murderer?" I
said sharply.

To my surprise he gave me an equally sharp look and shook his head.

"I'm not at all sure of that, Mr. Middlebrook," he answered quietly.
"Not at all sure! But I think I could get some information out of him
that I should be very glad to secure."

Miss Raven and I rose to leave; the inspector accompanied us to the
door of the police-station. And as we were thanking him for his polite
attentions, a man came along the street, and paused close by us,
looking inquiringly at the building from which we had just emerged and
at our companion's smart semi-uniform. Finally, as we were about to
turn away, he touched his cap.

"Begging your pardon," he said; "is this here the police office?"

There was a suggestion in the man's tone which made me think that he
had come there with a particular object, and I looked at him more
attentively. He was a shortish, thick-set man, hound-faced, frank of
eye and lip; no beauty, for he had a shock of sandy-red hair and three
or four days' stubble on his cheeks and chin; yet his apparent
frankness and a certain steadiness of gaze set him up as an honest
fellow. His clothing was rough; there were bits of straw, hay, wood
about it, as if he were well acquainted with farming life; in his
right hand he carried a stout ash-plant stick.

"You are right, my friend," answered the inspector. "It is! What are
you wanting?"

The man looked up the steps at his informant with a glance in which
there was a decided sense of humour. Something in the situation seemed
to amuse him.

"You'll not know me," he replied. "My name's Beeman--James Beeman. I
come fro' near York. I'm t' chap 'at were mentioned by one o' t'
witnesses at t' inquest on that strange man 'at were murdered
hereabouts. I should ha' called to see you about t' matter before now,
but I've nobbut just come back into this part o' t' country; I been
away up i' t' Cheviot Hills there."

"Oh?" said the inspector. "And--what mention was made of you?"

James Beeman showed a fine set of teeth in a grin that seemed to
stretch completely across his homely face.

"I'm t' chap 'at were spoken of as asking about t' graves o' t'
Netherfield family," he answered. "You know--on t' roadside one night,
off a fellow 'at I chanced to meet wi' outside Lesbury. That's who I
am!"

The inspector turned to Miss Raven and myself with a look which meant
more than he could express in words.

"Talk about coincidence!" he whispered. "This is the very man we'd
just mentioned. Come back to my office and hear what he's got to tell.
Follow me," he continued, beckoning the caller. "I'm much obliged to
you for coming. Now," he continued, when all four of us were within
his room. "What can you tell me about that? What do you know about the
grave of the Netherfields?"

Beeman laughed, shaking his round head. Now that his old hat was
removed, the fiery hue of his poll was almost alarming in its
crudeness of hue.

"Nowt," he said. "Nowt at all! I'll tell you all about it--that's what
I've comed here for, hearing as you were wondering who I was and what
had come o' me. I come up here--yes, it were on t' sixth o' March--to
see about some sheep stock for our maister, Mr. Dimbleby, and I put up
for t' first night at a temp'rance i' Alnwick yonder. But of course,
temp'rances is all right for sleeping and braikfasting, but nowt for
owt else, so when I'd tea'd there, I went down t' street for a
comfortable public, where I could smoke my pipe and have a glass or
two. And while I was there, a man come in 'at, from his description
i' t' papers, 'ud be this here fellow that were murdered. I didn't
talk none to him, but, after a bit, I heard him talking to t'
landlord. And, after a deal o' talk about fishing hereabouts, I heard
him asking t' landlord, as seemed to be a gr't fisherman and knew all
t' countryside, if he knew any places, churchyards, where there were
Netherfields buried? He talked so much about 'em, 'at 't name got
right fixed on my mind. T' next day I had business outside Alnwick, at
one or two farms, and that night I made further north, to put up at
Embleton. Now then, as I were walking that way, after dark I chanced
in wi' a man near Lesbury, and walked wi' him a piece, and I asked
him, finding he were a native, if he knew owt o' t' Netherfield
graves. And that 'ud be t' man 'at tell'd you 'at he'd met such a
person. All right!--I'm t' person.'

"Then you merely asked the question out of curiosity?" suggested the
inspector.

"Aye--just 'cause I'd heard t' strange man inquire," assented Beeman.
"I just wondered if it were some family o' what they call
consequence."

"You never saw the man again whom you speak of as having seen at
Alnwick?" the inspector asked. "And had no direct conversation with
him yourself?"

"Never saw t' fellow again, nor had a word with him," replied Beeman.
"He had his glass or two o' rum, and went away. But I reckon he was t'
man who was murdered."

"And where have you been, yourself, since the time you tell us about?"
asked the inspector.

"Right away across country," answered Beeman readily. "I went across
to Chillingham and Wooler, then forrard to some farms i' t' Cheviots,
and back by Alnham and Whittingham to Alnwick. And then I heard all
about this affair, and so I thought good to come and tell you what bit
I knew."

"I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Beeman," said the inspector. "You've
cleared up something, at any rate. Are you going to stay longer in the
neighbourhood?"

"I shall be here--leastways, at Alnwick yonder, at t' Temp'rance--for
two or three days yet, while I've collected some sheep together 'at
I've bowt for our maister, on one farm and another," replied Beeman.
"Then I shall be away. But if you ever want me, at t' 'Sizes, or wot
o' that sort, my directions is James Beeman, foreman to Mr. Thomas
Dimbleby, Cross-houses Manor, York."

When this candid and direct person had gone, the inspector looked at
Miss Raven and me with glances that indicated a good deal.

"That settles one point and seems to establish another," he remarked
significantly. "Salter Quick was not murdered by somebody who had come
into these parts on the same errand as himself. He was murdered by
somebody who was--here already!"

"And who met him?" I suggested.

"And who met him," assented the inspector. "And now I'm more anxious
than ever to know if there is anything in that tobacco-box theory of
Mr. Cazalette's. Couldn't you young people cajole Mr. Cazalette into
telling you a little? Surely he would oblige you, Miss Raven?"

"There are moments when Mr. Cazalette is approachable," replied Miss
Raven. "There are others at which I should as soon think of asking a
question of the Sphinx."

"Wait!" said I. "Mr. Cazalette, I firmly believe, knows something. And
now--you know more than you did. One mystery has gone by the board."

"It leaves the main one all the blacker," answered the inspector.
"Who, of all the folk in these parts, is one to suspect? Yet--it would
seem that Salter Quick found somebody here to whom his presence was so
decidedly unwelcome that there was nothing for it but--swift and
certain death! Why? Well--death ensures silence."

Miss Raven and I took our leave for the second time. We walked some
distance from the police-station before exchanging a word: I do not
know what she was thinking of; as for myself, I was speculating on the
change in my opinion brought about by the rough-and-ready statement of
the brusque Yorkshireman. For until then I had firmly believed that
the man who had accosted our friend of the Mariner's Joy, Jim
Gelthwaite, the drover, was the man who had murdered Salter Quick. My
notion was that this man, whoever he was, had foregathered somewhere
with Quick, that they were known to each other, and had a common
object, and that he had knifed Quick for purposes of his own. And now
that idea was exploded, and so far as I could see, the search for the
real assassin was yet to begin.

Suddenly Miss Raven spoke.

"I suppose it's scarcely possible that the murderer was present at
that inquest?" she asked, half-timidly, as if afraid of my ridiculing
her suggestion.

"Quite possible," said I. "The place was packed to the doors with all
sorts of people. But why?"

"I thought perhaps that he might have contrived to abstract that
tobacco-box, knowing that as long as it was in the hands of the police
there might be some clue to his identity," she suggested.

"Good notion!" I replied. "But there's just one thing against it. If
the murderer had known that, if he felt that, he'd have secured the
box when he searched Quick's clothing, as he undoubtedly did."

"Of course!" she admitted. "I ought to have thought of that. But there
are such a lot of things to think of in connection with this
case--threads interwoven with each other."

"You've been thinking much about it?" I asked.

She made no reply for a moment, and I waited, wondering.

"I don't think it's a very comfortable thing to know that one's had a
particularly brutal murder at one's very door and that, for all one
knows, the murderer may still be close at hand," she said at last.
"There's such a disagreeable feeling of uneasiness about this affair.
I know that Uncle Francis is most awfully upset by it."

I looked at her in some surprise. I had not seen any marked signs of
concern in Mr. Raven.

"I hadn't observed that," I said.

"Perhaps not," she answered. "But I know him better. He's an unusually
nervous man. Do you know that since this happened he's taken to going
round the house every night, examining doors and windows?--And--he's
begun to carry a revolver."

The last statement made me think. Why should Mr. Raven expect--or, if
not expect, be afraid of, any attack on himself? But before I could
make any comment on my companion's information, my attention to the
subject was diverted. All that afternoon the weather had been
threatening to break--there was thunder about. And now, with startling
suddenness, a flash of lightning was followed by a sharp crack, and
that on the instant by a heavy downpour of rain. I glanced at Miss
Raven's light dress--early spring though it was, the weather had been
warm for more than a week, and she had come out in things that would
be soaked through in a moment. But just then we were close to an old
red-brick house, which stood but a yard or two back from the road, and
was divided from it by nothing but a strip of garden. It had a deep
doorway, and without ceremony, I pushed open the little gate in front,
and drew Miss Raven within its shelter. We had not stood there many
seconds, our back to the door (which I never heard opened), when a
soft mellifluous voice sounded close to my startled ear.

"Will you not step inside and shelter from the storm?"

Twisting round sharply, I found myself staring at the slit-like eyes
and old parchment-hued face of a smiling Chinaman.




CHAPTER VIII

WAS IT A WOMAN?


Had Miss Raven and I suddenly been caught up out of that little coast
village and transported to the far East on a magic carpet, to be set
down in the twinkling of an eye on some Oriental threshold, we could
scarcely have been more surprised than we were at the sight of that
bland, smiling countenance. For the moment I was at a loss to think
who and what the man could be; he was in the dress of his own country,
a neat, close-fitting, high-buttoned blue jacket; there was a little
cap on his head, and a pigtail dependent from behind it--I was not
sufficiently acquainted with Chinese costumes to gather any idea of
his rank or position from these things--for aught I knew to the
contrary, he might be a mandarin who, for some extraordinary reason,
had found his way to this out-of-the-world spot. And my answer to his
courteous invitation doubtless sounded confused and awkward.

"Oh, thank you," I said, "pray don't let us put you to any trouble. If
we may just stand under your porch a moment--"

He stood a little aside, waving us politely into the hall behind him.

"Dr. Lorrimore would be very angry with me if I allowed a lady and
gentleman to stand in his door and did not invite them into his
house," he said, in the same even, mellifluous tones. "Please to
enter."

"Oh, is this Dr. Lorrimore's?" I said. "Thank you--we'll come in. Is
Dr. Lorrimore at home?"

"Presently," he answered. "He is in the village."

He closed the door as we entered, passed us with a bow, preceded us
along the hall, and threw open the door of a room which looked out on
a trim garden at the rear of the house. Still smiling and bland he
invited us to be seated, and then, with another bow, left the room,
apparently walking on velvet. Miss Raven and I glanced at each other.

"So Dr. Lorrimore has a Chinese man servant?" she said.
"How--picturesque!"

"Um!" I muttered.

She gave me a questioning, half-amused glance, and dropped her voice.

"Don't you like--Easterns?" she whispered.

"I like 'em in the East," I replied. "In Northumberland they
don't--shall we say they don't fit in with the landscape."

"I think he fits in--here," she retorted, looking round. "This is a
bit Oriental."

She was right in that. The room into which we had been ushered was
certainly suggestive of what one had heard of India. There were fine
Indian rugs on the floor; ivories and brasses in the cabinets; the
curtains were of fabric that could only have come out of some Eastern
bazaar; there was a faint, curious scent of sandal-wood and of dried
rose-leaves. And on the mantelpiece, where, in English households, a
marble clock generally stands, reposed a peculiarly ugly Hindu god,
cross-legged, hideous of form, whose baleful eyes seemed to follow all
our movements.

"Yes," I admitted, reflectively. "I think he fits in--here. Dr.
Lorrimore said he had been in India for some years, didn't he? He
appears to have brought some of it home with him."

"I suppose this is his drawing-room," said Miss Raven. "Now, if only
it looked out on palm-trees, and--and all other things that one
associates with India."

"Just so," said I. "What it does look out on, however, is a typical
English garden on which, at present, about a ton of rain is
descending. And we are nearly three miles from Ravensdene Court!"

"Oh, but it won't keep on like that, for long," she said. "And I suppose,
if it does, that we can get some sort of a conveyance--perhaps, Dr.
Lorrimore has a brougham that he'd lend us."

"I don't think that's very likely," said I. "The country practitioner,
I think, is more dependent on a bicycle than on a brougham. But here
is Dr. Lorrimore."

I had just caught sight of him as he entered his garden by a door set
in its ivy-covered wall. He ran hastily up the path to the
house--within a minute or two, divested of his mackintosh, he opened
the door of our room.

"So glad you were near enough to turn in here for shelter!" he
exclaimed, shaking hands with us warmly. "I see that neither of you
expected rain--now, I did, and I went out prepared."

"We made for the first door we saw," said Miss Raven. "But we'd no
idea it was yours, Dr. Lorrimore. And do tell me!--the Chinese," she
continued, in a whisper. "Is he your man-servant?"

Lorrimore laughed, rubbing his hands together. That day he was not in
the solemn, raven-hued finery in which he had visited Ravensdene
Court; instead he wore a suit of grey tweed, in which, I thought, he
looked rather younger and less impressive than in black. But he was
certainly no ordinary man, and as he stood there smiling at Miss
Raven's eager face, I felt conscious that he was the sort of somewhat
mysterious, rather elusive figure in which women would naturally be
interested.

"Man-servant!" he said, with another laugh. "He's all the servant I've
got. Wing--he's too or three other monosyllabic patronymics, but Wing
suffices--is an invaluable person. He's a model cook, valet,
launderer, general factotum--there's nothing that he can't or won't
do, from making the most perfect curries--I must have Mr. Raven to try
them against the achievements of his man!--to taking care about the
halfpennies, when he goes his round of the tradesmen. Oh, he's a
treasure--I assure you, Miss Raven, you could go the round of this
house, at any moment, without finding a thing out of place or a speck
of dust in any corner. A model!"

"You brought him from India, I suppose?" said I.

"I brought him from India, yes," he answered. "He'd been with me for
some time before I left. So, of course, we're thoroughly used to each
other."

"And does he really like living--here?" asked Miss Raven. "In such
absolutely different surroundings?"

"Oh, well, I think he's a pretty good old hand at making the best of the
moment," laughed Lorrimore. "He's a philosopher. Deep--inscrutable--in
short, he's Chinese. He has his own notions of happiness. At present he's
supremely happy in getting you some tea--you mightn't think it, but that
saffron-faced Eastern can make an English plum-cake that would put the
swellest London pastry-cook to shame! You must try it!"

The Chinaman presently summoned us to tea, which he had laid out in
another room--obviously Lorrimore's dining-room. There was nothing
Oriental in that; rather, it was eminently Victorian, an affair of
heavy furniture, steel engravings, and an array, on the sideboard, of
what, I suppose, was old family plate. Wing ushered us and his master
in with due ceremony and left us; when the door had closed on him,
Lorrimore gave us an arch glance.

"You see how readily and skilfully that chap adapts himself to the
needs of the moment," he said. "Now, you mightn't think it, but this
is the very first time I have ever been honoured with visitors to
afternoon tea. Observe how Wing immediately falls in with English
taste and custom! Without a word from me, out comes the silver
tea-pot, the best china, the finest linen! He produces his choicest
plum-cake; the bread-and-butter is cut with wafer-like thinness; and
the tea--ah, well, no Englishwoman, Miss Raven, can make tea as a
Chinese man-servant can!"

"It's quite plain that you've got a treasure in your house, Dr.
Lorrimore," said Miss Raven. "But then, the Chinese are very clever,
aren't they?"

"Very remarkable people, indeed," assented our host. "Shrewd,
observant, penetrative. I have often wondered if this man of mine
would find any great difficulty in seeing through a brick wall!"

"He would be a useful person, perhaps, in solving the present
mystery," said I. "The police seem to have got no further."

"Ah, the Quick business?" remarked Lorrimore. "Um!--well, as regards
that, it seems to me that whatever light is thrown on it will have to
be thrown from the other angle--from Devonport. From all that I heard
and gathered, it's very evident that what is really wanted is a strict
examination into the immediate happenings at Noah Quick's inn, and
also into the antecedents of Noah and Salter. But is there anything
fresh?"

I told him, briefly, all that had happened that afternoon--of the
information given by James Beeman and of the disappearance of the
tobacco-box.

"That's odd!" he remarked. "Let's see--it was the old gentleman I saw
at Ravensdene Court who had some fancy about that box, wasn't it?--Mr.
Cazalette. What was his idea, now?"

"Mr. Cazalette," I replied, "saw, or fancied he saw, certain marks or
scratches within the lid of the box which he took to have some
meaning: they were, he believed, made with design--with some purpose.
He thought that by photographing them, and then enlarging his
photograph, he would bring out those marks more clearly, and possibly
find out what they were really meant for."

"Yes?" said Lorrimore. "Well--what has he discovered?"

"Up to now nobody knows," said Miss Raven. "Mr. Cazalette won't tell
us anything."

"That looks as if he had discovered something," observed Lorrimore.
"But--old gentlemen are a little queer, and a little vain. Perhaps
he's suddenly going to let loose a tremendous theory and wants to
perfect it before he speaks. Oh, well!" he added, almost
indifferently, "I've known a good many murder mysteries in my
time--out in India--and I always found that the really good way of
getting at the bottom of them was to go right back!--as far back as
possible. If I were the police in charge of these cases, I should put
one question down before me and do nothing until I'd exhausted every
effort to solve it."

"And that would be--what?" I asked.

"This," said he. "What were the antecedents of Noah and Salter Quick?"

"You think they had a past?" suggested Miss Raven.

"Everybody has a past," answered Lorrimore. "It may be this; it may be
that. But nearly all the problems of the present have their origin and
solution in the past. Find out what and where those two middle-aged
men had been, in their time!--and then there'll be a chance to work
forward."

The rain cleared off soon after we had finished tea, and presently
Miss Raven and I took our leave. Lorrimore informed us that Mr. Raven
had asked him to dinner on the following evening; he would accordingly
see us again very soon.

"It will be quite an event for me!" he said, gaily, as he opened his
garden gate. "I live like an anchorite in this place. A little--a
very little practice--the folk are scandalously healthy!--and a great
deal of scientific investigation--that's my lot."

"But you have a treasure of a servant," observed Miss Raven. "Please
tell him that his plum-cake was perfection."

The Chinaman was just then standing at the open door, in waiting on
his master. Miss Raven threw him a laughing nod to which he responded
with a deep bow--we left them with that curious picture in our minds:
Lorrimore, essentially English in spite of his long residence in the
East; the Chinaman, bland, suave, smiling.

"A curious pair and a strange combination!" I remarked as we walked
away. "That house, at any rate, has a plenitude of brain-power in it.
What amazes me is that a clever chap like Master Wing should be
content to bury his talents in a foreign place, out of the world--to
make curries and plum-cake!"

"Perhaps he has a faithful devotion to his master," said Miss Raven.
"Anyway, it's very romantic, and picturesque, and that sort of thing,
to find a real live Chinaman in an English village--I wonder if the
poor man gets teased about his queer clothes and his pigtail?"

"Didn't Lorrimore say he was a philosopher?" said I. "Therefore he'll
be indifferent to criticism. I dare say he doesn't go about much."

That the Chinaman was not quite a recluse, however, I discovered a day
or two later, when, going along the headlands for a solitary stroll
after a stiff day's work in the library, I turned into the Mariner's
Joy for a glass of Claigue's undeniably good ale. Wing was just coming
out of the house as I entered it. He was as neat, as bland, and as
smiling as when I saw him before; he was still in his blue jacket, his
little cap. But he was now armed with a very large umbrella, and on
one arm he carried a basket, filled with small parcels; evidently he
had been on a shopping expedition. He greeted me with a deep obeisance
and respectful smile and went on his way--I entered the inn and found
its landlord alone in his bar-parlour.

"You get some queer customers in here, Mr. Claigue," I observed as he
attended to my modest wants. "Yet it's not often, I should think, that
a real live Chinaman walks in on you."

"He's been in two or three times, that one," replied Claigue.
"Chinaman he is, no doubt, sir, but it strikes me he must know as much
of this country as he knows of his own, for he speaks our tongue like
a native--a bit soft and mincing-like, but never at a loss for a word.
Dr. Lorrimore's servant, I understand."

"He has been in Dr. Lorrimore's service for some years," I answered.
"No doubt he's had abundant opportunities of picking up the language.
Still--it's an odd sight to see a Chinaman, pigtail and all, in these
parts, isn't it?"

"Well, I've had all sorts in here, time and again," replied Claigue
reflectively. "Sailor men, mostly. But," he added, with a meaning
look, "of all the lot, that poor chap as got knifed the other week was
the most mysterious! What do you make of it, sir?"

"I don't know what to make of it," said I. "I don't think anybody
knows what to make of it. The police don't, anyhow!"

"The police!" he exclaimed, with a note of derision. "Yah! they're
worse than a parcel of old women! Have they ever tried? Just a bit of
surface inquiry--and the thing slips past. Of course, the man was a
stranger. Nobody cares; that's about it. My notion is that the police
don't care the value of that match whether the thing's ever cleared up
or not. Nine days' wonder, you know, Mr. Middlebrook. Still--there's a
deal of talk about."

"I suppose you hear a good deal in this parlour of yours?" I
suggested.

"Nights--yes," he said. "A murder's always a good subject of
conversation. At first, those who come in here of an evening--regular
set there, in from the village at the back of the cliffs--they could
talk of naught else, starting first this and that theory. It's died
down a good deal, to be sure--there's been naught new to start it
afresh, on another tack--but there is some talk, even now."

"And what's the general opinion?" I inquired. "I suppose there is
one?"

"Aye, well, I couldn't say that there's a general opinion," he
answered. "There's a many opinions. And some queer notions, too!"

"Such as what?" I asked.

"Well," said he, with a laugh, as if he thought the suggestion
ridiculous, "there's one that comes nearer being what you might call
general than any of the others. There's a party of the older men that
come here who're dead certain that Quick was murdered by a woman!"

"A woman!" I exclaimed. "Whatever makes them think that?"

"Those footmarks," answered Claigue. "You'll remember, Mr.
Middlebrook, that there were two sets of prints in the sand
thereabouts. One was certainly Quick's--they fitted his boots. The
other was very light--delicate, you might call 'em--made, without
doubt, by some light-footed person. Well, some of the folk hereabouts
went along to Kernwick Cove the day of the murder, and looked at those
prints. They say the lighter ones were made by a woman."

I let my recollections go back to the morning on which I had found
Quick lying dead on the patch of yellow sand.

"Of course," I said, reflectively, "those marks are gone, now."

"Gone? Aye!" exclaimed Claigue. "Long since. There's been a good many
tides washed over that spot since this, Mr. Middlebrook. But they
haven't washed out the fact that a man's life was let out there! And
whether it was man or woman that stuck that knife into the poor
fellow's shoulders, it'll come out, some day."

"I'm not so sure of that," said I. "There's a goodly percentage of
unsolved mysteries of that kind."

"Well, I believe in the old saying," he declared. "Murder will out!
What I don't like is the notion that the murderer may be walking about
this quarter, free, unsuspected. Why, I may ha' served him with a
glass of beer! What's to prevent it? Murderers don't carry a label on
their foreheads!"

"What do you think the police ought to do--or ought to have done?" I
asked.

"I think they should ha' started working backward," he replied, with
decision. "I read all I could lay hands on in the newspapers, and I
came to the conclusion that there was a secret behind those two men.
Come! two brothers murdered on the same night--hundreds of miles
apart! That's no common crime, Mr Middlebrook. Who were these two
men--Noah and Salter Quick? What was their past history? That's what
the police ought to ha' busied themselves with. If they lost or
couldn't pick up the scent here, they should ha' tried far back. Go
backward they should--if they want to go forward."

That was the second time I had heard that advice, and I returned to
Ravensdene Court reflecting on it. Certainly it was sensible. Who,
after all, were Noah and Salter Quick--what was their life-story. I
was wondering how that could be brought to light, when, having dressed
for dinner, and I was going downstairs, Mr. Cazalette's door opened
and he quietly drew me inside his room.

"Middlebrook!" he whispered--though he had carefully shut the
door--"you're a sensible lad, and I'll acquaint you with a matter.
This very morning, as I was taking my bit of a dip, my pocket-book was
stolen out of the jacket that I'd left on the shore. Stolen,
Middlebrook!"

"Was there anything of great value in it?" I asked.

"Aye, there was!" answered Mr. Cazalette. "There was that in it which,
in my opinion, might be some sort of a clue to the real truth about
yon man's murder!"




CHAPTER IX

THE ENLARGED PHOTOGRAPH


I was dimly conscious, in a vague, uncertain fashion, that Mr.
Cazalette was going to tell me secrets; that I was about to hear
something which would explain his own somewhat mysterious doings on
the morning of the murder; a half-excited, anticipating curiosity rose
in me. I think he saw it, for he signed to me to sit down in an easy
chair close by his bed; he himself, a queer, odd figure in his quaint,
old-fashioned clothes, perched himself on the edge of the bed.

"Sit you down, Middlebrook," he said. "We've some time yet before
dinner, and I'm wanting to talk to you--in private, you'll bear in
mind. There's things I know that I'm not willing--as yet--to tell to
everybody. But I'll tell them to you, Middlebrook--for you're a
sensible young fellow, and we'll take a bit of counsel together.
Aye--there was that in my pocket-book that might be--I'll not say
positively that it was, but that it might be--a clue to the identity
of the man that murdered yon Salter Quick, and I'm sorry now that I've
lost it and didn't take more care of it. But man! who'd ha' thought
that I'd have my pocket-book stolen from under my very nose! And
that's a convincing proof that there's uncommonly sharp and clever
criminals around us in these parts, Middlebrook."

"You lost your pocket-book while you were bathing, Mr. Cazalette?" I
asked, wishful to know all his details.

He turned on his bed, pointing to a venerable Norfork jacket which
hung on a peg in a recess by the washstand. I knew it well enough: I
had often seen him in it first thing of a morning.

"It's my custom," said he, "to array myself in that old coatie when I
go for my bit dip, you see--it's thick and it's warm, and I've had it
twenty years or more--good tweed it is, and homespun. And whenever
I've gone out here of a morning, I've put my pocket-book in the inside
pocket, and laid the coat itself and the rest o' my scanty attire on
the bank there down at Kernwick Cove while I went in the water. And I
did that very same thing this morning--and when I came to my clothes
again, the pocket-book was gone!"

"You saw nobody about?" I suggested.

"Nobody," said he. "But Lord, man, I know how easy it was to do the
thing! You'll bear in mind that on the right hand side of that cove
the plantation comes right down to the edge of the bit of cliff--well,
a man lurking amongst the shrubs and undergrowth 'ud have nothing to
do but reach his arm to the bank, draw my coatie to his nefarious
self, and abstract my property. And by the time I was on dry land
again, and wanting my garments, he'd be a quarter of a mile away!"

"And--the clue?" I asked.

He edged a little nearer to me, and dropped his voice still lower.

"I'm telling you," he said. "Now you'll let your mind go back to the
morning whereon you found yon man Quick lying dead and murdered on the
sand? And you'll remember that before ever you were down at the place,
I'd been there before you. You'll wonder how it comes about that I
didn't find what you found, but then, there's a many big rocks and
boulders standing well up on that beach, and its very evident that the
corpse was obscured from my view by one or other and maybe more of
'em. Anyway, I didn't find Salter Quick--but I did find something that
maybe--mind, I'm saying maybe, Middlebrook--had to do with his
murder."

"What, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, though I knew well enough what it was.
I wanted him to say, and have done with it; his circumlocution was
getting wearisome. But he was one of those old men who won't allow
their cattle to be hurried, and he went on in his long-winded way.

"You'll be aware," he continued, "that there's a deal of gorse and
bramble growing right down to the very edge of the coast thereabouts,
Middlebrook. Scrub--that sort o' thing. The stuff that if it catches
anything loose, anything protruding from say, the pocket of a garment,
'll lay hold and stick to it. Aye, well, on one of those bushes, gorse
or bramble I cannot rightly say which, just within the entrance to the
plantation, I saw, fluttering in the morning breeze that came sharp
and refreshing off the face of the water, a handkerchief. And there
was two sorts o' stains on it--caused in the one case by mud--the
soft mud of the adjacent beach--and in the other by blood. A smear of
blood--as if somebody had wiped blood off his fingers, you'll
understand. But it was not that, not the blood, made me give my
particular attention to the thing, which I'd picked off with my thumb
and finger. It was that I saw at once that this was no common man's
property, for there was a crest woven into one corner, and a monogram
of initials underneath it, and the stuff itself was a sort that I'm
unfamiliar with--it wasn't linen, though it looked like it, and it
wasn't silk, for I'm well acquainted with that fabric--maybe it was a
mixture of the two, but it had not been woven or made in any British
factory: the thing, Middlebrook, was of foreign origin."

"What were the markings you speak of?" I asked.

"Well, I tell you there was a crest; anyhow it was a coronet, or that
make of a thing," he answered. "Woven in one corner--I mean worked in
by hand. And the letters beneath it were a V and a de--small, that
last--and a C. Man! that handkerchief was the property of some man of
quality! And the stains being wet--the mud-stains, at any rate, though
the smear of blood was dry--I gathered that it had been but recently
deposited, by accident, where I found it. I reckoned it up this way,
d'ye see, Middlebrook--the man who'd left it there had used it on the
beach--maybe he'd cut his toe, bathing, or something o' that sort, or
likely a cut finger, gathering a shell or a fossil--and had thrust it
carelessly into a side-pocket, for a thorn to catch hold of as he
passed. But there it was, and there I found it."

"And what did you do with it, Mr. Cazalette?" I inquired with seeming
innocence.

"I'm telling you," he replied. "I had no knowledge, you're aware, of
what lay behind me on the sands: I just thought it a queer thing that
a man of quality's handkerchief should be there. And I slipped it
among my towels, to bring along wi' me to the house here. But I'm
whiles given to absent-mindedness, and not liking that I should put
the blood-stained thing down on my dressing-table there and cause the
maids to wonder, I thrust it into a hedge as I was passing along, till
I could go back and examine it at my leisure. And when I'd got myself
dressed, I went back and took it, and put it in a stout envelope into
my pocket--and then you came along, Middlebrook, with your story of
the murder, and I saw then that before saying a word to anybody, I'd
keep my own counsel and examine that thing more carefully. And man
alive! I've no doubt whatever that the man who left the handkerchief
behind him was the man who knifed Salter Quick."

"I gather, from all you've said, that the handkerchief was in the
pocket-book you had stolen this morning?" I suggested.

"You're right in that," said he. "Oh, it was! Wrapped up in a bit of
oiled paper, and in an envelope, sealed down and attested in my
handwriting, Middlebrook--date and particulars of my discovery of it,
all in order. Aye, and there was more. Letters and papers of my own,
to be sure, and a trifle money--bank-notes. But there was yet another
thing that, in view of all we know, may be a serious thing to have
fall into the hands of ill-doers. A print, Middlebrook, of the
enlarged photograph I got of the inside of the lid of yon dead man's
tobacco-box!"

He regarded me with intense seriousness as he made this announcement,
and not knowing exactly what to say, I remained silent.

"Aye!" he continued. "And it's my distinct and solemn belief that it's
that the thief was after! Ye see, Middlebrook, it's been spoken
of--not widely noised abroad, as you might say, but still spoken of,
and things spread, that I was keenly interested in those marks,
scratches, whatever they were, on the inside of that lid, and got the
police to let me make a photograph, and it's my impression that
there's somebody about who's been keenly anxious to know what results
I obtained."

"You really think so?" said I. "Why--who could there be?"

"Aye, man, and who could there be, wi' a crest and monogram on his
kerchief, that 'ud murder yon man the secret way he has?" he retorted,
answering my incredulous look with one of triumph. "Tell me that, my
laddie! I'm telling you, Middlebrook, that this was no common murder
any more than the murder of the man's own brother down yonder at
Saltash, which is a Cornish riverside place, and a good four or five
hundred miles away, was a common, ordinary crime! Man! we're living in
the very midst of a mystery--and that there's bloody-minded, aye, and
bloody-handed men, maybe within our gates, but surely close by us, is
as certain to me as that I'm looking at you!"

"I thought you believed that Salter Quick's murderer was miles away
before ever Salter Quick was cold?" I observed.

"I did--and I've changed my mind," he answered. "I'm not thinking it
any more, and all the less since I was robbed of my venerable
pocket-book, with those two exhibits o' the crime in its wame. The
murderer is about! and though he mayn't have thought to get his
handkerchief, he may have hoped that he'd secure some result o' my
labours in the photographic line."

"Mr. Cazalette!" said I, "what were the results of your labours? I
don't suppose that the print which was in your pocket-book was the
only one you possess?"

"You're right there," he replied. "It wasn't. If the thief thought he
was securing something unique, he was mistaken. But--I didn't want
him, or anybody, to get hold of even one print, for as sure as we're
living men, Middlebrook, what was on the inside of that lid was--a key
to something!"

"You forget that the tobacco-box itself has been stolen from the
police's keeping," I reminded him.

"And I don't forget anything of the sort," he retorted. "And the fact
you've mentioned makes me all the more assured, my man, that what I
say is correct! There's him, or there's them--in all likelihood it's
the plural--that's uncommonly anxious, feverishly anxious, to get hold
of that key that I suspicion. What were Salter Quick's pockets turned
out for? What were the man's clothes slashed and hacked for? Why did
whoever slew Noah Quick at Saltash treat the man in similar fashion?
It wasn't money the two men were murdered for!--no, it was for
information, a secret! Or, as I put it before, the key to something."

"And you believe, really and truly, that this key is in the marks or
scratches or whatever they are on the lid of the tobacco-box?" I
asked.

"Aye, I do!" he exclaimed. "And what's more, Middlebrook, I believe
I'm a doited old fool! If I'd contrived to get a good, careful,
penetrating look at that box, without saying anything to the police, I
should ha' shown some common-sense. But like the blithering old idiot
that I am, I spoke my thoughts aloud before a company, and I made a
present of an idea to these miscreants. Until I said what I did, the
murderous gang that knifed yon two men hadn't a notion that Salter
Quick carried a key in his tobacco-box! Now--they know."

"You don't mean to suggest that any of the murderers were present when
you asked permission to photograph the box!" I exclaimed.
"Impossible!"

"There's very few impossibilities in this world, Middlebrook," he
answered. "I'm not saying that any of the gang were present in Raven's
outhouse yonder, where they carried the poor fellow's body, but there
were a dozen or more men heard what I said to the police-inspector,
like the old fool I was, and saw me taking my photograph. And men
talk--no matter of what degree they are."

"Mr. Cazalette," said I, "I'd just like to see your results."

He got off his bed at that, and going over to a chest of drawers,
unlocked one, and took out a writing-case, from which he presently
extracted a sheet of cardboard, whereon he had mounted a photograph,
beneath which, on the cardboard, were some lines of explanatory
writing in its fine, angular style of caligraphy. This he placed in my
hand without a word, watching me silently as I looked at it.

I could make nothing of the thing. It looked to me like a series--a
very small one--of meaningless scratches, evidently made with the
point of a knife, or even by a strong pin on the surface of the metal.
Certainly, the marks were there, and, equally certainly, they looked
to have been made with some intent--but what did they mean?

"What d'ye make of it, lad?" he inquired after awhile. "Anything?"

"Nothing, Mr. Cazalette!" I replied. "Nothing whatever."

"Aye, well, and to be candid, neither do I," he confessed. "And yet,
I'm certain there's something in it. Take another look--and consider
it carefully."

I looked again--this is what there was to look at: mere lines, and at
the foot of the photograph, Mr. Cazalette's explanatory notes and
suggestions: I sat studying this for a few moments. "I make nothing of
it. It seems to be a plan. But of what?"

"It is a plan, Middlebrook," he answered. "A plan of some place. But
there I'm done! What place? Somebody that's in the secret, to a
certain point, might know--but who else could? I've speculated a deal
on the meaning and significance of those lines and marks, but without
success. Yet--they're the key to something."

"Probably to some place that Salter Quick knew of," I suggested.

"Aye, and that somebody else wants to know of!" he exclaimed. "But
what place, and where?"

"He was asking after a churchyard," said I, suddenly remembering
Quick's questions to me and his evident eagerness to acquire
knowledge. "This may be a rude drawing of a corner of it."

"Aye, and he wanted the graves of the Netherfields," remarked Mr.
Cazalette, dryly. "And I've made myself assured of the fact that there
isn't a Netherfield buried anywhere about this region! No, it's my
belief that this is a key to some spot in foreign parts, and that
there's those who are anxious to get hold of it that they'll not
stop--and haven't stopped--at murder. And now--they've got it!"

"They've got--or somebody's got--your pocket-book," I answered. "But
really, you know, Mr. Cazalette, this, and the handkerchief, mayn't
have been the thief's object. You see, it must be pretty well known
that you go down there to bathe every morning, and are in the habit of
leaving your clothes about--and, well there may be those who're not
particularly honest even in these Arcadian solitudes."

"No--I'm not with you, Middlebrook!" he said. "Somewhere around us
there's what I say--crafty and bloody murderers! But ye'll keep all
this to yourself for awhile, and----"

Just then the dinner-bell rang, and he put the photographic print
away, and we went downstairs together. That was the evening on which
Dr. Lorrimore was to dine with us--we found him in the hall, talking
to Mr. Raven and his niece. Joining them, we found that their subject
of conversation was the same that had just engaged Mr. Cazalette and
myself--the tobacco-box. It turned out that the police-inspector had
been round to Lorrimore's house, inquiring if Lorrimore, who, with the
police-surgeon, had occupied a seat at the table whereon the Quick
relics were laid out at the inquest, had noticed that now missing and
consequently all-important object.

"Of course I saw it!" remarked Lorrimore, narrating this. "I told him
I not only saw it, but handled it--so, too, did several other
people--Mr. Cazalette there had drawn attention to the thing when we
were examining the dead man, and there was some curiosity about it."
(Here Mr. Cazalette, standing close by me, nudged my elbow, to remind
me of what he had just said upstairs.) "And I told the inspector
something else, or, rather, put him in mind of something he'd
evidently forgotten," continued Lorrimore. "That inquest, or, to be
precise, the adjourned inquest, was attended by a good many strangers,
who had evidently been attracted by mere curiosity. There were a lot
of people there who certainly did not belong to this neighbourhood.
And when the proceedings were over, they came crowding round that
table, morbidly inquisitive about the dead man's belongings. What
easier, as I said to the inspector, than for some one of them--perhaps
a curio-hunter--to quietly pick up that box and make off with it?
There are people who'd give a good deal to lay hold of a souvenir of
that sort."

Mr. Raven muttered something about no accounting for tastes, and we
went in to dinner, and began to talk of less gruesome things.
Lorrimore was a brilliant and accomplished conversationalist, and the
time passed pleasantly until, as we men were lingering a little over
our wine, and Miss Raven was softly playing the piano in the adjoining
drawing-room, the butler came in and whispered to his master. Raven
turned an astonished face to the rest of us.

"There's the police-inspector here now," he said, "and with him a
detective--from Devonport. They are anxious to see me--and you,
Middlebrook. The detective has something to tell."




CHAPTER X

THE YELLOW SEA


I am not sure which, or how many, of us sitting at that table had ever
come into personal contact with a detective--I myself had never met
one in my life!--but I am sure that Mr. Raven's announcement that
there was a real live one close at hand immediately excited much
curiosity. Miss Raven, in the adjoining room, the door of which was
open, caught her uncle's last words, and came in, expectantly--I think
she, like most of us, wondered what sort of being we were about to
see. And possibly there was a shade of disappointment on her face when
the police-inspector walked in followed, not by the secret, subtle,
sleuth-hound-like person she had perhaps expected, but by a little,
rotund, rather merry-faced man who looked more like a prosperous
cheesemonger or successful draper than an emissary of justice: he was
just the sort of person you would naturally expect to see with an
apron round his comfortable waist-line or a pencil stuck in his ear
and who was given to rubbing his fat, white hands--he rubbed them now
and smiled, wholesale, as his companion led him forward.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Raven," said the inspector with an
apologetic bow, "but we are anxious to have a little talk with you and
Mr. Middlebrook. This is Mr. Scarterfield--from the police at
Devonport. Mr. Scarterfield has been in charge of the investigations
about the affair--Noah Quick, you know--down there, and he has come
here to make some further inquiries."

Mr. Raven murmured some commonplace about being glad to see his
visitors, and, with his usual hospitality, offered them refreshment.
We made room for them at the table at which we were sitting, and some
of us, I think, were impatient to hear what Mr. Scarterfield had to
tell. But the detective was evidently one of those men who readily
adapt themselves to whatever company they are thrown into, and he
betrayed no eagerness to get to business until he had lighted one of
Mr. Raven's cigars and pledged Mr. Raven in a whisky and soda. Then,
equipped and at his ease, he turned a friendly, all-embracing smile on
the rest of us.

"Which," he asked, looking from one to the other, "which of these
gentlemen is Mr. Middlebrook?"

The general turning of several pairs of eyes in my direction gave him
the information he wanted--we exchanged nods.

"It was you who found Salter Quick?" he suggested. "And who met him,
the previous day, on the cliffs hereabouts, and went with him into the
Mariner's Joy?"

"Quite correct," said I. "All that!"

"I have read up everything that appeared in print in connection with
the Salter Quick affair," he remarked. "It has, of course, a bearing
on the Noah Quick business. Whatever is of interest in the one is of
interest in the other."

"You think the two affairs one really--eh?" inquired Mr. Raven.

"One!" declared Scarterfield. "The object of the man who murdered Noah
was the same object as that of the man who murdered Salter. The two
murderers are, without doubt, members of a gang. But what gang, and
what object--ah! that's just what I don't know yet!"

What we were all curious about, of course, was--what did he know that
we did not already know? And I think he saw in what direction our
thoughts were turning, for he presently leaned forward on the table
and looked around the expectant faces as if to command our attention.

"I had better tell you how far my investigations have gone," he said
quietly. "Then we shall know precisely where we are, and from what
point we can, perhaps, make a new departure, now that I have come
here. I was put in charge of this case--at least of the Saltash
murder--from the first. There's no need for me to go into the details
of that now, because I take it that you have all read them, or quite
sufficient of them. Now, when the news about Salter Quick came
through, it seemed to me that the first thing to do was to find out a
very pertinent thing--who were the brothers Quick? What were their
antecedents? What was in their past, the immediate or distant past,
likely to lead up to these crimes? A pretty stiff proposition, as you
may readily guess! For, you must remember, each was a man of mystery.
No one in our quarter knew anything more of Noah Quick than that he
had come to Devonport some little time previous, taken over the
license of the Admiral Parker, conducted his house very well, and had
the reputation of being a quiet, close, reserved sort of man who was
making money. As to Salter, nobody knew anything except that he had
been visiting Noah for some time. Family ties, the two men evidently
have none!--not a soul has come forward to claim relationship.
And--there has been wide publicity."

"Do you think Quick was the real name?" asked Mr. Cazalette, who from
the first had been listening with rapt attention. "Mayn't it have been
an assumed name?"

"Well, sir," replied Scarterfield, "I thought of that. But you must
remember that full descriptions of the two brothers appeared in the
press, and that portraits of both were printed alongside. Nobody came
forward, recognizing them. And there has been a powerful, a most
powerful, inducement for their relations to appear, never mind whether
they were Quick, or Brown, or Smith, or Robinson,--the most powerful
inducement we could think of!"

"Aye!" said Mr. Cazalette. "And that was----"

"Money!" answered the detective. "Money! If these men left any
relations--sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces--it's in the interest of
these relations to come into the light, for there's money awaiting
them. That's well known--I had it noised abroad in the papers, and let
it be freely talked of in town. But, as I say, nobody's come along. I
firmly believe, now, that these two hadn't a blood relation in the
world--a queer thing, but it seems to be so."

"And--this money?" I asked. "Is it much?"

"That was one of the first things I went for," answered Scarterfield.
"Naturally, when a man comes to the end which Noah Quick met with,
inquiries are made of his solicitors and his bankers. Noah had both in
our parts. The solicitors knew nothing about him except that he had
employed them now and then in trifling matters, and that of late he
had made a will in which, in brief fashion, he left everything of
which he died possessed to his brother Salter, whose address he gave
as being the same as his own; about the same time they had made a will
for Salter, in which he bequeathed everything he had to Noah. But as
to the antecedents of Noah and Salter--nothing! Then I approached the
bankers. There I got more information. When Noah Quick first went to
Devonport he deposited a considerable sum of money with one of the
leading banks at Plymouth, and at the time of his death he had several
thousand pounds lying there to his credit: his bankers also had charge
of valuable securities of his. On Salter Quick's coming to the Admiral
Parker, Noah introduced him to this bank: Salter deposited there a sum
of about two thousand pounds, and of that he had only withdrawn about
a hundred. So he, too, at the time of his death, had a large balance;
also, he left with the bankers, for safe keeping, some valuable scrip
and securities, chiefly of Indian railways. Altogether, those bankers
hold a lot of money that belongs to the two brothers, and there are
certain indications that they made their money--previous to coming to
Devonport--in the far East. But the bankers know no more of their
antecedents than the solicitors do. In both instances--banking matters
and legal matters--the two men seem to have confined their words to
strict business, and no more; the only man I have come across who can
give me the faintest idea of anything respecting their past is a
regular frequenter of the Admiral Parker who says that he once
gathered from Salter Quick that he and Noah were natives of
Rotherhithe, or somewhere in that part, and that they were orphans and
the last of their lot."

"Of course, you have been to Rotherhithe--making inquiries?" suggested
Mr. Raven.

"I have, sir," replied Scarterfield. "And I searched various parish
registers there, and found nothing that helped me. If the two brothers
did live at Rotherhithe, they must have been taken there as children
and born elsewhere--they weren't born in Rotherhithe parish. Nor could
I come across anybody at all who knew anything of them in seafaring
circles thereabouts. I came to the conclusion that whoever those two
men were, and whatever they had been, most of their lives had been
spent away from this country."

"Probably in the far East, as you previously suggested," muttered Mr.
Cazalette.

"Likely!" agreed Scarterfield. "Their money would seem to have been
made there, judging by, at any rate, some of their securities. Well,
there's more ways than one of finding things out, and after I'd
knocked round a good deal of Thames' side, and been in some queer
places, I turned my attention to Lloyds. Now, connected with Lloyds,
are various publications having to do with shipping matters--the
'Weekly Shipping Index,' the 'Confidential Index,' for instance;
moreover, with time and patience, you can find out a great deal at
Lloyds not only about ships, but about men in them. And to cut a long
story short, gentlemen, last week I did at last get a clue about Noah
and Salter Quick which I now mean to follow up for all it's worth."

Here the detective, suddenly assuming a more business-like air than he
had previously shown, paused, to produce from his breast-pocket a
small bundle of papers, which he laid before him on the table. I
suppose we all gazed at them as if they suggested deep and dark
mystery--but for the time being Scarterfield let them lie idle where
he had placed them.

"I'll have to tell the story in a sort of sequence," he continued.
"This is what I have pieced together from the information I collected
at Lloyds. In October, 1907, now nearly five years ago, a certain
steam ship, the _Elizabeth Robinson_, left Hong-Kong, in Southern
China, for Chemulpo, one of the principal ports in Korea. She was
spoken in the Yellow Sea several days later. After that she was never
heard of again, and according to the information available at Lloyds
she probably went down in a typhoon in the Yellow Sea and was totally
lost, with all hands on board. No great matter, perhaps!--from all
that I could gather she was nothing but a tramp steamer that did, so
to speak, odd jobs anywhere between India and China; she had gone to
Hong-Kong from Singapore: her owners were small folk in Singapore, and
I imagine that she had seen a good deal of active service. All the
same, she's of considerable interest to me, for I have managed to
secure a list of the names of the men who were on her when she left
Hong-Kong for Chemulpo--and amongst those names are those of the two
men we're concerned about: Noah and Salter Quick."

Scarterfield slipped off the india-rubber band which confined his
papers, and selecting one, slowly unfolded it. Mr. Raven spoke.

"I understood that this ship, the _Elizabeth Robinson_, was lost with
all hands?" he said.

"So she is set down at Lloyds," replied Scarterfield. "Never heard of
again--after being spoken in the Yellow Sea about three days from
Chemulpo."

"Yet--Noah and Salter Quick were on her--and were living five years
later?" suggested Mr. Raven.

"Just so, sir!" agreed Scarterfield, dryly. "Therefore, if Noah and
Salter Quick were on her, and as they were alive until recently,
either the _Elizabeth Robinson_ did not go down in a typhoon, or from
any other reason, or--the brothers Quick escaped. But here is a list
of the men who were aboard when she sailed from Hong-Kong. She was, I
have already told you, a low-down tramp steamer, evidently picking up
a precarious living between one far Eastern port and another--a small
vessel. Her list includes a master, or captain, and a crew of
eighteen--I needn't trouble you with their names, except in two
instances, which I'll refer to presently. But here are the names of
Noah Quick, Salter Quick--set down as passengers. Passengers!--not
members of the crew. Nothing in the list of the crew strikes me but
the two names I spoke of, and that I'll now refer to. The first name
will have an interest for Mr. Middlebrook. It's Netherfield."

"Netherfield!" I exclaimed. "The name----"

"That Salter Quick asked you particular questions about when he met
you on the headlands, Mr. Middlebrook," answered Scarterfield, with a
knowing look, "and that he was very anxious to get some news of
William Netherfield, deck-hand, of Blyth, Northumberland--that's the
name on the list of those who were aboard the _Elizabeth Robinson_
when she went out of Hong-Kong--and disappeared forever!"

"Of Blyth?" remarked Mr. Cazalette. "Um!--Blyth lies some miles to the
southward."

"I'm aware of it, sir," said Scarterfield, "and I propose to visit the
place when I have made certain inquiries about this region. But I hope
you appreciate the extraordinary coincidence, gentlemen? In October,
1907, Salter Quick is on a tramp steamer in the Yellow Sea in company,
more or less intimate, with a sailor-man from Blyth, in
Northumberland, whose name is Netherfield: in March, 1912, he is on
the sea-coast near Alnmouth, asking anxiously if anybody knows of a
churchyard or churchyards in these parts where people of the name of
Netherfield are buried? Why? What had the man Netherfield who was with
Salter Quick in Chinese waters in 1907 got to do with Salter Quick's
presence here five years later?"

Nobody attempted to answer these questions, and presently I put one
for myself.

"You spoke of two names on the list as striking you with some
significance," I said. "Netherfield is one. What is the other?"

"That of a Chinaman," he replied promptly, referring to his
documents. "Set down as cook--I'm told most of those coasting steamers
in that part of the world carry Chinamen as cooks. Chuh Fen--that's
the name. And why it's significant to me, when all the rest aren't, is
this--during the course of my inquiries at Lloyds, I learnt that about
three years ago a certain Chinaman, calling himself Chuh Fen, dropped
in at Lloyds and was very anxious to know if the steamer _Elizabeth
Robinson_, which sailed from Hong-Kong for Chemulpo in October, 1907,
ever arrived at its destination? He was given the same information
that was afforded me, and on getting it went away, silent. Now
then--was this man, this Chinaman, the Chuh Fen who turned up in
London, the same Chuh Fen who was on the _Elizabeth Robinson_? If so,
how did he escape a shipwreck which evidently happened? And why--if
there was no shipwreck, and something else took place of which we have
no knowledge--did he want to know, after two years' lapse of time, if
the ship did really get to Chemulpo?"

There was a slight pause then, suddenly broken by Dr. Lorrimore, who
then spoke for the first time.

"Do you know what all this is suggesting to me?" he exclaimed, nodding
at Scarterfield. "Something happened on that ship! It may be that
there was no shipwreck, as you said just now--something may have taken
place of which we have no knowledge. But one fact comes out
clearly--whether the _Elizabeth Robinson_ ever reached any port or
not, it's very evident--nay, certain!--that Noah and Salter Quick did.
And--considering the inquiry he made at Lloyds--so did the Chinaman,
Chuh Fen. Now--what could those three have told about the _Elizabeth
Robinson_?"

No one made any remark on that, until Scarterfield remarked softly:

"I wish I had chanced to be at Lloyds when Chuh Fen called there!
But--that's three years ago, and Chuh Fen may be--where?"

Something impelled Miss Raven and myself to glance at Dr. Lorrimore.
He nodded--he knew what we were thinking of. And he turned to
Scarterfield.

"I happen," he said, "to have a Chinaman in my employ at present--one
Wing, a very clever man. He has been with me for some years--I brought
him from India, when I came home recently. An astute chap, like----"

He paused suddenly; the detective had turned a suddenly interested
glance on him.

"You live hereabouts, sir?" he asked. "I--I don't think I've caught
your name?"

"Dr. Lorrimore--our neighbour," said Mr. Raven hurriedly. "Close by."

I think Lorrimore saw what had suddenly come into Scarterfield's mind.
He laughed, a little cynically.

"Don't get the idea, or suspicion, formed or half-fledged, that my man
Wing had anything to do with the murder of Salter Quick!" he said. "I
can vouch for him and his movements--I know where he was on the night
of the murder. What I was thinking of was this--Wing is a man of
infinite resource and of superior brains. He might be of use to you in
tracing this Chuh Fen, if Chuh Fen is in England. When Wing and I
were in London--we were there for some time after I returned from
India, previous to my coming down here--Wing paid a good many visits
to his fellow Chinamen in the East End, Limehouse way; he also had a
holiday in Liverpool and another at Swansea and Cardiff, where, I am
told, there are Chinese settlements. And I happen to know that he
carries on an extensive correspondence with his compatriots. If you
think he could give you any information, Mr. Scarterfield----"

"I'd like to have a talk with him, certainly," responded the
detective, with some eagerness. "I know a bit about these chaps--some
of them can see through a brick wall!"

Lorrimore turned to Mr. Raven.

"If your coachman could run across with the dog-cart, or anything
handy," he said, "and would tell Wing that I want him, here, he'd be
with me at once. And he may be able to suggest something--I know that
before he came to me--I picked him up in Bombay--he had knocked about
the ports of Southern China a great deal."

"Come with me and give my coachman instructions," said Mr. Raven.
"He'll run over to your place in ten minutes; and while we are
discussing this affair we may as well have as much light as we can get
on it."

He and Lorrimore left the room together; when they returned, the
conversation reverted to a discussion of possible ways and means of
finding out more about the antecedents of the Quicks. Half an hour
passed in this--fruitlessly; then the door was quietly opened and
behind the somewhat pompous figure of the butler I saw the bland,
obsequious smile of the Chinaman.




CHAPTER XI

THE FIVE CONCLUSIONS


We who sat round that table during the next hour or so must have made a
strange group. Mr. Raven, always a little nervous and flustered in manner;
his niece, fresh and eager, in her pretty dinner dress, a curious contrast
to the antiquated garb and parchment face of old Cazalette, who sat by
her, watchful and doubting; the officialdom-suggesting figure of the
police-inspector, erect and rigid in his close-fitting uniform; the
detective, rubicund and confident, though of what one scarcely knew;
Lorrimore and myself, keen listeners and watchers, and last, but not by
any means the least notable, the bland, suave Chinaman in his neat native
dress, sitting modestly in the background, inscrutable as an image carved
out of ivory. I do not know what the rest thought, but it lay in my own
mind that if there was one man in that room who might be trusted to find
his way out of the maze in which we were wandering, that man was Dr.
Lorrimore's servant.

It was Lorrimore who, at the detective's request, explained to Wing
why we had sent for him. The Chinaman nodded a grave assent when
reminded of the Salter Quick affair--evidently he knew all about it.
And--if one really could detect anything at all in so carefully-veiled
a countenance--I thought I detected an increased watchfulness in his
eyes when Scarterfield began to ask him questions arising out of what
Lorrimore had said.

"There is evidence," began the detective, "that this man Salter Quick,
and his brother Noah Quick, were mixed up in some affair that had
connection with a trading steamer, the _Elizabeth Robinson_, believed
to have been lost in the Yellow Sea, between Hong-Kong and Chemulpo,
in October 1907. On board that steamer was a certain Chinaman, who,
two years later, turned up in London. Now, Dr. Lorrimore tells me that
when you and he were in London, some little time ago, you spent a good
deal of time amongst your own people in the East End, and that you
also visited some of them in Liverpool, Cardiff, and Swansea. So I
want to ask you--did you ever hear, in any of these quarters, of a man
named Chuh Fen? Here--in London--two years after the _Elizabeth
Robinson_ affair--that's three years back from now."

The Chinaman moved his head very slightly.

"No," he answered. "Not in London--nor in England. But I knew a man
named Chuh Fen ten, eleven, years ago, before I went to Bombay and
entered my present service."

"Where did you know him?" asked Scarterfield.

"Two--perhaps three places," said Wing. "Singapore, Penang, perhaps
Rangoon, too. I remember him."

"What was he?"

"A cook--very good cook."

"Would you be surprised to hear of his being in England three years
ago?"

"Not at all. Many Chinamen come here. I myself--why not others? If
Chuh Fen came here, three years ago, perhaps he came as cook on some
ship trading from China or Burma. Then--go back again."

"I wonder if he did!" muttered the detective. "Still," he continued,
turning to Wing, "a lot of your people when they come here, stop,
don't they?"

"Many stop in this country," said Wing.

"Laundry business, eating-houses, groceries, and so on?" suggested
Scarterfield. "And chiefly in the places I've mentioned, eh?--the East
End of London, Liverpool, and the two big Welsh towns? Now, I want to
ask you a question. This man I'm talking of, Chuh Fen, was certainly
in London three years ago. Are there places and people in London where
one could get to hear of him?"

"Where I could get to hear of him--yes," answered Wing.

"You say--where you could get to hear of him," remarked Scarterfield.
"Does that mean that you would get information which I shouldn't get?"

The very faintest ghost of a smile showed itself in the wrinkles about
the Chinaman's eyes. He inclined his head a little, politely, and
Lorrimore stepped into the arena.

"What Wing means is that being a Chinaman himself, naturally he could
get news of a fellow-Chinaman from fellow-Chinamen where you, an
Englishman, wouldn't get any at all!" he said with a laugh. "I dare
say that if you, Mr. Scarterfield, went down Limehouse way seeking
particulars about Chuh Fen, you'd be met with blank faces and stopped
ears."

"That's just what I'm suggesting, doctor," answered the detective,
good-humouredly. "I'll put the thing in a nutshell--my profound belief
is that if we want to get at the bottom of these two murders we've got
to go back a long way, to the _Elizabeth Robinson_ time, and that Chuh
Fen is the only person I've heard of, up to now, who can throw a light
on that episode. And it seems to me, to be plain about it, that Mr.
Wing there could be extremely useful."

"How?" asked Lorrimore. "He's at your service, I'm sure."

"Well, by finding out if this Chuh Fen, when he was here, three years
since, made any revelations to his Chinese brethren in Limehouse or
elsewhere," replied Scarterfield. "He may have known something about
the brothers Quick and concerning that _Elizabeth Robinson_ affair
that would help immensely. Any little thing!--a mere scrap of
information--just a bit of chance gossip--a hint--you don't know how
valuable these things are. The mere germ of a clue--you know!"

"I know," said Lorrimore. He turned to his servant and addressed him
in some strange tongue in which Wing at once responded: for some
minutes they talked together, volubly: then Lorrimore looked round at
Scarterfield.

"Wing says that if Chuh Fen was in London three years ago he can
engage to find out how long he was here, whence he came and why, and
where he went," he said. "I gather that there's a sort of freemasonry
amongst these men--naturally, they seek each other out in strange
lands, and there are places in London and the other parts to which a
Chinaman resorts if he happens to land in England. This he can do for
you--he's no doubt of it."

"There's another thing," said Scarterfield. "If Chuh Fen is still in
England--as he may be--can he find him?"

Wing's smooth countenance, on hearing this, showed some sign of
animation. Instead of replying to the detective, he again addressed
his master in the foreign tongue. Lorrimore nodded and turned to
Scarterfield with a slightly cynical smile.

"He says that if Chuh Fen is anywhere in England he can lay hands on
him, quickly," said Lorrimore. "But--he adds that it might not be at
all convenient to Chuh Fen to come into the full light of day: Chuh
Fen may have reasons of his own for desiring strict privacy."

"I take you!" said Scarterfield, with a wink. "All right, doctor! If
Mr. Wing can unearth Mr. Chuh Fen and that mysterious gentleman can
give me a tip, I'll respect his privacy! So now--do we get at
something? Do I understand that your man will help us by trying to
find out some particulars of Chuh Fen, or laying hands on Chuh Fen
himself? All expenses defrayed, you know," he went on, turning to
Wing, "and a handsome remuneration if it leads to results. And--follow
your own plans! I know you Chinamen are smart and deep at this sort of
thing!"

"Leave it to him," said Lorrimore. "To him and to me. If there's news
to be had of this man Chuh Fen, he'll get it."

"Then that is something done!" exclaimed Scarterfield, rubbing his
hands. "Good!--I like to see even a bit of progress. But now, while
I'm here, and while we're at business--and I hope this young lady
doesn't find it dull business!--there's another matter. The inspector
tells me there have been alarums and excursions about a certain
tobacco-box which was found on Salter Quick, that Mr. Cazalette--you,
sir, I think--had had various experiments in connection with it, and
that the thing has been stolen. Now, I want to know all about
that!--who can tell me most?"

Mr. Cazalette was sitting between Miss Raven and myself; I leaned
close to him and whispered, feeling that now was the time to bring
every known fact to light.

"Tell all--all--you told me just before dinner!" I urged upon him.
"Table the whole pack of cards: let us get at something--now!"

He hesitated, looking half-suspiciously from one to the other of those
opposite.

"D'ye think I'd be well advised, Middlebrook?" he whispered. "Is it
wise policy to show all the cards you're holding?"

"In this case, yes!" I said. "Tell everything!"

"Well," he said. "Maybe. But--it's on your advice, you'll remember,
and I'm not sure this is the time, nor just the company. However--"

So, for the second time that day, Mr. Cazalette told the story of the
tobacco-box and of his pocket-book, and produced his photograph. It
came as a surprise to all there but myself, and I saw that Mr. Raven
in particular was much perturbed by the story of the theft that
morning. I knew what he was thinking--the criminal or criminals were
much too close at hand. He cut in now and then with a question--but
the detective listened in grim, absorbed silence.

"Now, you know, this is really about the most serious and important
thing I've heard, so far," he said, when Mr. Cazalette had finished.
"Just let's sum it up. Salter Quick is murdered in a strange and
lonely place. Not for his goods, for all his money and his
valuables--not inconsiderable--are found on him. But the murderer was
in search of something that he believed to be on Salter Quick, for he
thoroughly searched his clothing, slashed its linings, turned his
pockets out--and probably, no, we may safely say certainly, failed in
his search. He did not get what he was after--any more than his
fellow-murderer who slew Noah Quick, some hundreds of miles away from
here, about the very same time, got what he was after. But now comes
in Mr. Cazalette. Mr. Cazalette, inadvertently, never thinking what he
was doing, draws public attention to certain marks and scratches,
evidently made on purpose, in Salter Quick's tobacco-box. Do you see
my point, gentlemen? The murderer hears of this and says to himself,
'That box is the thing I want!' So--he appropriates it, at the
inquest! But even then, so faint and almost illegible are the marks
within the lid, he doesn't find exactly what he wants. But he knows
that Mr. Cazalette was going to submit his photograph to an enlarging
process, which would make the marks clearer; he also knows Mr.
Cazalette's habits (a highly significant fact!) so he sets himself to
steal Mr. Cazalette's pocket-book, theorizing that Mr. Cazalette
probably has a copy of the enlarged photograph within it. And, this
morning, while Mr. Cazalette is bathing, he gets it! Gentlemen!--what
does this show? One thing as a certainty--the murderer is close at
hand!"

There was a dead silence--broken at last by a querulous murmur from
Mr. Cazalette himself.

"Ye may be as sure o' that, my man, as that Arthur's Seat o'erlooks
Edinbro'!" he said. "I wish I was as sure o' his identity!"

"Well, we know something that's gradually bringing us toward
establishing that," remarked Scarterfield. "Let me see that photograph
again, if you please."

The rest of us watched Scarterfield as he studied the thing over which
Mr. Cazalette and I had exercised our brains in the half-hour before
dinner. He seemed to get no more information from a long perusal of it
than we had got, and he finally threw it away from him across the
table, with a muttered exclamation which confessed discomfiture. Miss
Raven picked up the photograph.

"Aye!" mumbled Mr. Cazalette. "Let the lassie look at it! Maybe a
woman's brains is more use than a man's whiles."

"Often!" said the detective. "And if Miss Raven can make anything of
that----"

I saw that Miss Raven was already wishful to speak, and I hastened to
encourage her by throwing a word to Scarterfield.

"You'd be infinitely obliged to her, I'm sure," I put in. "It would be
a help?"

"No slight one!" said he. "There's something in that diagram.
But--what?"

Miss Raven, timid, and a little shy of concentrated attention, laid
the photograph again on the table.

"Don't--don't you think there may be some explanation of this in what
Salter Quick said to Mr. Middlebrook when they met on the cliffs?" she
asked. "He told Mr. Middlebrook that he wanted to find a churchyard
where there were graves of people named Netherfield, but he didn't
know exactly where it was, though it was somewhere in this locality.
Now supposing this is a rough outline of that churchyard? These outer
lines may be the wall--then these little marks may show the situation
of the Netherfield graves. And that cross in the corner--perhaps there
is something buried, hidden, there, which Salter Quick wanted to
find?"

The detective uttered a sharp exclamation and snatched up the
photograph again.

"Good! Good!" he said. "Upon my word, I shouldn't wonder! To be sure,
that may be it. What's against it?"

"This," remarked Mr. Cazalette solemnly. "That there isn't anybody of
the name of Netherfield buried between Alnmouth and Budle Bay! That's
a fact."

"Established," added the police-inspector, "by as an exhaustive
inquiry as anybody could make. It is a fact--as Mr. Cazalette says."

"Well," observed Scarterfield, "but Salter Quick may have been wrong
in his locality. You can be sure of this--whatever secret he held was
got from somebody else. He may have been twenty, thirty, even fifty
miles out. But we know something--the Netherfield who was with him on
the _Elizabeth Robinson_ hailed from Blyth, in this county. I'm going
to Blyth myself--tomorrow; I'll find out if there are Netherfields
buried about there. Personally, I believe Miss Raven's hit the nail on
the head--this is a rough chart of a spot Salter Quick wanted to
find--where, no doubt, something is hidden. What? Who knows?
But--judging from the fact that two men have been murdered for the
secret of it--something of great value. Buried treasure, no doubt."

"That's precisely what I've been thinking from the very first,"
murmured Mr. Cazalette. "And ye'll have to go back--to go back, my
man!"

"It's certainly the only way of going forward," agreed Scarterfield
with a laugh. "But now, before we part, gentlemen, let us see where
we've got to. I, for myself, have drawn five distinct conclusions
about this affair:

"_First_--That the Quicks, Noah and Salter, were in possession of a
secret, which was probably connected with their shipmate of the
_Elizabeth Robinson_, Netherfield, who hailed from Blyth;

"_Second_--That certain men knew the Quicks to be in possession of
that secret and murdered both to get hold of it;

"_Third_--That they failed to get it from either Noah or Salter;

"_Fourth_--That Mr. Cazalette's zeal about the tobacco-box, publicly
expressed, put the criminals on a new scent, and that they, in
pursuance of it, stole both the tobacco-box and Mr. Cazalette's
pocket-book;

"_Fifth_--That the criminals are--or were very recently, in fact, this
very morning--in the vicinity of this place.

"So," he continued, looking round, "the thing's narrowing. Let Mr.
Wing there help by getting some news of Chuh Fen, if possible; as for
me, I'm going to follow up the Netherfield line. I think we shall
track these fellows yet--you never know how unexpectedly a clue may
turn up."

"You've not said anything about the handkerchief that I found,"
observed Mr. Cazalette. "There's a clue, surely!"

"Difficult to follow up, sir," replied Scarterfield. "There is such a
thing as little articles of that sort being lost at the laundry, put
into the wrong basket, and so on. Now if we could trace the owner of
the handkerchief and find where he gets his washing done, and a great
deal more--you see? But we'll not lose sight of it, Mr.
Cazalette--only, there are more important clues than that to go on in
the meantime. The great thing is--what was this precious secret that
the Quicks shared, and that certainly had to do with some place here
in Northumberland? Let's get at that--if we can."

The two police officials went away with Dr. Lorrimore and his servant,
all in deep converse, and the four of us who were left behind
endeavoured to settle our minds for the repose of the night. But I saw
that Mr. Raven had been upset by the recent talk: he had got it firmly
fixed in his consciousness that the murderer of Salter Quick was, as
it were, in our very midst.

"How do I know that the guilty man mayn't be one of my own servants?"
he muttered, as he, Mr. Cazalette and I took up our candles. "There
are six men in the house--all strangers to me--and several employed
outside. The idea's deucedly unpleasant!"

"Ye may put it clear away from you, Raven," said Mr. Cazalette. "The
murderer may be within bow-shot, but he's none o' yours. Ye'll look
deeper, far, far deeper than that--this is no ordinary affair, and no
ordinary men at the bottom of it." Then, when he and I had left our
host, and were going along one of the upstairs passages towards our
own rooms, he added: "No ordinary man, Middlebrook! but you see how
ordinary folk are suspicioned! Raven'll be doubting the _bona fides_
of his own footmen and his own garden lads next. No--no! it'll be
deeper down than that, my lad!"

"The mystery is deep," I agreed.

"Aye--and I'm wondering if it was well to let yon Chinese fellow into
all of it," he muttered significantly. "I'm no great believer in
Orientals, Middlebrook."

"Lorrimore answers for him," said I.

"And who answers for Lorrimore?" he demanded. "What do you or I know
of Lorrimore? I'm thinking yon Lorrimore was far too glib of his
tongue--and maybe I was too ready myself and talked beyond reason to
strangers. I don't know Lorrimore--nor his Chinaman."

From which I gathered that Mr. Cazalette himself was not superior to
suspicions.




CHAPTER XII

NETHERFIELD BAXTER


However Mr. Raven's nerves may have been wrung by the mysterious
events which found place around his recently acquired possessions,
nothing untoward or disturbing occurred at Ravensdene Court itself at
that time. Indeed, had it not been for what we heard from outside, and
for such doings as the visit of the inspector and Scarterfield, the
daily life under Mr. Raven's roof would have been regular and decorous
almost to the point of monotony. We were all engaged in our respective
avocations--Mr. Cazalette with his coins and medals; I with my books
and papers; Mr. Raven with his steward, his gardeners, and his various
potterings about the estate; Miss Raven with her flowers and her golf.
Certainly there was relaxation--and in taking it, we sorted out each
other. Mr. Raven and Mr. Cazalette made common cause of an afternoon;
they were of that period of life--despite the gulf of twenty years
between them--when lounging in comfortable chairs under old cedar
trees on a sunlit lawn is preferable to active exercise; Miss Raven
and I being younger, found our diversion in golf and in occasional
explorations of the surrounding country. She had a touch of the
nomadic instinct in her; so had I; the neighbourhood was new to both;
we began to find great pleasure in setting out on some excursion as
soon as lunch was over and prolonging our wanderings until the falling
shadows warned us that it was time to make for home. What these
pilgrimages led to--in more ways than one--will eventually appear.

We heard nothing of Scarterfield, the detective, nor of Wing, pressed
into his service, for some days after the c

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