“The precaution would make no difference with a self-loader,” Bobby remarked. “It is true people often leave the first chamber of a revolver unloaded.”
They all turned as they heard approaching steps. A man was coming towards them from the direction of the pond. He was carrying something. When he was nearer they could see it was a pistol.
Anne said:—
“Well, you’ve got it.”
She began to walk away towards the castle.
CHAPTER XVIII
GLASGOW VISIT
Nothing else of importance happened or transpired that day, and Bobby was in a somewhat dispirited mood when at last he was able to return home, eat a belated supper, and recount to Olive the events of the day. This was a preliminary adopted since his marriage to his favourite device of putting everything down on paper in as clear a form as he could manage. Her expression grew very grave as she listened to the tale of the discovery of the automatic in the ornamental pond in the castle grounds, and Anne’s confession that it was she who had thrown it there.
“Is that enough for an arrest?” Olive asked doubtfully. “The pistol has been sent for expert examination,” Bobby explained. “I imagine if it turns out to be the one used, the colonel will feel an arrest necessary. But what’s bothering me most is where this Bertram Brown comes in, and why he has vanished.”
“He may have nothing to do with it,” Olive suggested.
“I know,” Bobby agreed. “But in a maze like this, one has to consider every possibility, however remote. Very likely it’ll only lead to a dead end. You get used to that in our job. All the same, the whole thing begins with the arrival from America of a chap called Bertram. Another Bertram arrives, also from America, and Bertram No. 1 is very upset, but recovers when he decides it can’t be the Bertram he knew, because that Bertram is ‘as good as dead’. The next thing that happens is that Ralph Hoyle clears out. Then Bertram No. 2 vanishes. It all seems to me to form part of a pattern, a very carefully laid out pattern, too. But I don’t quite see yet where or how to fit in the bits. Or even where to make a start.”
“Well,” Olive pointed out, “you know one starting point. The Northern Lights Hotel in Glasgow is where the second Bertram begins, isn’t it?”
“Glasgow has had a look round there,” Bobby objected, and then rubbed the end of his nose and thought hard, while Olive wondered why stimulation of the end of a nose should increase, as it so often seemed to do, masculine cerebral activity. “It’s just possible,” Bobby went on, having concluded his nose-tip rubbing, “that they may have overlooked something I could spot. They aren’t familiar with all the ins and outs of the case, and there might be some trifle I could spot they couldn’t tell mattered. Only there’s one thing—you remember, I wanted to have a chat with Messrs. Blacklock’s office boy, and I can’t do that if I go to Glasgow. Besides it’s Sunday to-morrow.”
“I could find the office boy for you if you like,” Olive volunteered. “I expect there will be a housekeeper or caretaker or someone at the office who would know where he lives.”
“It might be an idea,” Bobby agreed. “No one would suspect police activity if it was a woman asking, and you have to go a bit carefully with a firm of lawyers, especially when it is all so jolly vague.”
That then was to be Olive’s task for the Sunday; and late as it was Bobby risked official wrath by ringing up the colonel. Fortunately that gentleman had not gone to bed, but in his study was thinking as hard as Bobby himself had been doing, though perhaps with less effect. To him Bobby was put through at once, and from him duly received permission to make the Glasgow trip and, since on Sunday trains were inconvenient, to use a car.
“That’s all right, then,” Bobby said, returning from the ’phone. “It’ll be a bit of a drive, too. And another wild goose chase most likely. It’s long odds there’s no connection. I’ll swear Bertram No. 1 knew nothing about Bertram No. 2’s arrival till I told him. He doesn’t seem to have been near the castle, so that rules them out. But there’s Arthur Hoyle in the background, and the Vicar and Clinton Wells and so on. Any one of them may be concerned. And of course Ralph Hoyle’s disappearance is suggestive—though what of goodness knows.”
“You don’t think anything has happened to him?” Olive asked hesitatingly, for though the fear was in her mind she did not like to give it expression.
“When murder starts you never know where it’ll end,” Bobby said grimly. “Some seem to get the taste for it, like the Croydon unknown who was never caught. My own idea is that Bertram No. 1—Bertram, Lord Wych, that is —is only a puppet, and that there’s someone in the background pulling the strings.”
On that they went to bed, and first thing in the morning Bobby was on the road to Glasgow, making such good speed as law and occasion permitted. He arrived about noon, and after a brief interview with the Glasgow police who seemed a little amused at his having come so far on so futile an errand, was allotted a plain clothes sergeant to guide him to the Northern Lights Hotel.
It was a comfortable-looking though quite unpretentious establishment, and the Glasgow police had made their inquiries so thoroughly that plainly not the tiniest item of information had escaped them. With some complacence the plain clothes sergeant remarked on the care and thoroughness his colleagues had displayed, and Bobby agreed warmly, and said it was only what in Midwych they always expected from Glasgow. He explained, too, that he had brought with him a photograph of the missing Bertram Brown’s signature in the Midwych hotel and would like to compare it with that in the Northern Lights guest register.
The sergeant suggested that that was in the nature of a work of supererogation, and, in saying this, stole a sideway glance at Bobby to see if the southerner was duly impressed by a word theology has made more familiar north rather than south of the Tweed. A little disappointed that Bobby took the word as it were in his stride, the sergeant added that he knew Mr. Owen was a careful man—and how like to distant thunder he rolled his ‘r’ in ‘careful’—and certainly no precaution was ever unnecessary.
So the register was duly produced, but photograph and original were never compared, for at the first sight of the register Bobby gave a little jump and then pointed to one of the last entries, one that recorded that Ralph Hoyle, of Brimsbury Wych, near Midwych, had stayed the night there.
“That’s your man, probably,” said the Glasgow sergeant, taking the blow bravely, but rolling his ‘r’s’ more than ever. “Well, now, ye’ll note that entry was made after our visit, so it couldn’t have been seen then. Travelling under his own name, too, as open as the day.”
“I expect that’s how he managed to escape notice,” Bobby said. “Often enough the best concealment is no concealment. Only—why did he come here?
The sergeant thought that was clear. Making his escape. Lying low till he got a chance of a passage to the States. Wouldn’t it be as well to ring up headquarters, report their discovery, and suggest a sharp look out being kept at the docks?
“Trying to get through by running a bluff in the open,” said the sergeant over the ’phone, and at the other end it was grimly remarked that an open bluff was as good as a capture, once it was known. Bobby, closely questioning the Northern Lights management, learned from them nothing of significance. Mr. Hoyle had attracted no special attention, but then an hotel guest has to be very eccentric indeed to attract special attention. It was vaguely remembered that he had hung about a good deal, had seemed to be expecting a visitor, had asked if any one had inquired for him, and finally had received a long telephone message, after which he had paid his bill and departed.
Not much the wiser, but wondering who the telephone message had been from, since obviously whoever it was had known where to find Ralph, Bobby returned to the police headquarters, where he was assured that everything possible would be done to trace the missing man, or at least to discover by what route he had left the city.
“He may have skipped over to Ireland,” suggested the superintendent.
“Get down to the south of Ireland and you only have to say you are dodging the police to be welcomed by all. Or he may have skipped anywhere. But we’ll do our best.”
With that assurance Bobby departed home. It was late, and he was thoroughly tired out with the long drive when he reached Midwych. There he learned that Glasgow had been as good as its word and had already sent information that a man answering to Ralph Hoyle’s description had been seen to take the southward bound train from Glasgow.
“Apparently,” said Glasgow with a touch of malice, “he made use of a return ticket, since none was issued to him here.”
It was a fair deduction then, Glasgow thought, that the ticket had been bought at Midwych and therefore was available only to Midwych for return. No doubt excess fare could be paid to another destination, but that would be noticed and reported. So a strong probability existed, in Glasgow’s opinion, that to Midwych Ralph was returning.
Bobby agreed it seemed likely, and presently received a report that Ralph had actually been seen by an acquaintance leaving the Midwych station about the time of the arrival of a Glasgow train. Once again it seemed that Ralph had evaded pursuit by the simple method of making no effort to evade it.
“Impudence or innocence,” observed Colonel Glynne ruefully, and, tired as Bobby was by his long trip, he went on to Brimsbury Wych, though this time with a plain clothes man to drive for him, and accompanied by another, a sergeant, in case he required help.
Ralph’s innocence or impudence had not however extended to making a public appearance in the village or at the castle. At the castle Bobby made careful and detailed inquiries, and Sophy, when he questioned her, pointed out with some asperity that Ralph had quite evidently and simply gone to Glasgow to keep an appointment, and was there any harm in that? Then he had returned home again and wasn’t that perfectly natural? So what was all the fuss about?
“He doesn’t seem to have returned home yet,” Bobby remarked.
“Well, perhaps he has another appointment to keep,” suggested Sophy, “Why not?”
“That’s an idea,” Bobby said and looked thoughtful.
It struck him as a possibility that Ralph had been called to Glasgow on some pretext or another and then, on some fresh pretext some new meeting place had been arranged whereto Ralph was now on his way.
But by whom? With what purpose? Whereabouts?
Somewhere in the neighbourhood, no doubt, since it was to Midwych Ralph had returned. But ‘this neighbourhood’ was a vague term, and then there flashed into Bobby’s mind a sudden memory of the inquiry Clinton Wells had made concerning the exact position of the Charles the Second oak. Could it be there, he wondered, this new trysting place, and even as he wondered he saw how Sophy was looking at him, and understood at once that the same idea had come to her.
“Oh,” she said, and ran out of the room so swiftly, so lightly, so unexpectedly, that her disappearance quite startled Bobby, and more than startled Martin, with whom she collided violently just outside the door.
“He was listening,” she called over her shoulder as she disentangled herself and ran on.
“Were you?” Bobby asked; and Martin, whom only contact with the wall had saved from going full length on the floor, answered angrily:—
“I shall inform her ladyship that unless I receive a full apology from the young lady, I shall prefer to hand in my notice.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t answer my question,” Bobby said, and walked on to find his sergeant whom he instructed to return to Midwych to ask there for two men to be detailed for special duty to watch the Charles the Second oak.
“Tell Colonel Glynne,” Bobby said, “that it’s only an off-chance, but Ralph Hoyle almost certainly went to Glasgow to keep an appointment and it may be he has come back to keep another.”
The sergeant said nothing, but told himself it was lucky he had his promotion and so was no longer a constable and liable to be picked on to keep such useless, tedious, senseless vigils.
Alas for the vanity of human expectations.
Colonel Glynne said:—
“All right. It may turn out important, so you had better go yourself, sergeant, and take a good man with you.”
The sergeant, with thoughts too deep for words, retreated. To the superintendent who was also in the room, Colonel Glynne said meditatively:—
“You know, Inspector Owen is a perpetual puzzle to me. He looks and generally acts like the most stolid matter-of-fact, unimaginative Englishman you ever heard of, and then he comes out with some sort of guesswork, intuition, subconscious reasoning, whatever you like to call it, that’s as likely as not to hit the mark. The Welsh in him most likely. I suppose a good many English are like that—Celtic strain in us all that bubbles up from time to time. It’s what upsets foreigners—a divine unreason the poets call it. It’ll upset Hitler and his pals before this job is through.”
So the colonel pursued his analysis in philosophical reflection; and Bobby, back at the castle and asking for Miss Longden, to whom he had wished to put another question, was told that she had gone out, leaving a brief message that no one was to wait up for her and delegating her duties with Lady Wych to one of the maids who had sometimes, on other occasions, taken her place for brief periods.
“Martin’s gone out, too, and says he won’t be back to-night,” added the maid to whom Bobby was speaking, one of the older members of the household staff. “Every one seems to think they can do just as they like with his lordship dead, and her ladyship in her room, and Miss Anne not seeming to care. Everything at sixes and sevens,” she complained.
Bobby said vaguely that it was all very trying, and he asked himself with some misgiving whether there was or could be any connection between Sophy’s sudden resolve to spend the night elsewhere and Martin’s abrupt departure.
He decided to go on to the vicarage, though by now it was late and pitch dark, and see if Sophy was there. Or perhaps Ralph, though of that Bobby had small hope, for it was growing more and more fixed in his mind that Ralph at Glasgow had been given an appointment at the Charles the Second oak.
But why? and for what purpose? and why the earlier summons to Glasgow? Was that to confuse the trail, so that any search made would be there and not here?
Bobby’s looks were grave and troubled as he thought of that dark, solitary meeting place in the heart of the forest, and of how few and rare would be its visitors now that the summer season was over, how little the chance of anything happening there coming to light for many months.
Unnecessary fears, he told himself, vexed that his imagination should be so out of control as to present to him forebodings and fears for which the actual facts offered such slight foundation. A sign, he supposed, of the strain recent events had imposed upon them all.
He reached the vicarage. At this time the blackout in country districts was only very laxly enforced, and Mr. Longden stood framed in the light streaming from the hall as he talked to Bobby at the open door.
The vicar was, it seemed, worried and uneasy. One of the villagers had been saying he had seen Sophy hurrying along a field path that led nowhere save to the forest; to the heart of the forest where the trees grew most thickly, where the stretches of gorse and bracken, and of the comparatively open glades that abounded elsewhere, hardly existed. It was a dark night, however; the villager might easily be mistaken; and Mr. Longden, though worried, felt there must surely be some misapprehension, for what errand could Sophy possibly have that would send her so late to the lonely, the deserted forest?
“I was on the point of walking over to the castle to inquire,” he said, a little in the manner of a man confessing to a nervousness he knew to be slightly absurd.
Bobby made no comment, for he thought to himself that it might be easy to guess the nature of Sophy’s errand—if indeed it was for the forest she was bound.
He wondered if he could overtake her. He felt the attempt would have to be made. He asked what path it was on which Sophy was said to have been se
en. It led, he learned, almost directly to the Charles the Second oak, and was often used by hikers and picnickers bound in the summer for that well-known view-point. But the path was not very easy to find or keep to, since it was crossed by many side tracks.
As quickly as the darkness and his ignorance of the ground permitted, he hurried on; for he had a feeling that haste was needed, and when he reached the verge of the forest, where the tall trees made the black night blacker still, he saw, or not so much saw as was aware of, a dark and shadowy form flitting lightly before him, only a short distance ahead.
He called her by name. She did not answer. He heard instead, in the quiet of the forest and the night, how instantly she increased her speed.
CHAPTER XIX
WYCHWOOD
Bobby called but got no answer. He called again, his voice lost in the vast and sombre silence of the woods. He began to run, but already those light footsteps he had been aware of had faded, they, too, into the all-prevailing stillness. He had a powerful electric torch with him. He flung its beam ahead, around, as he ran. Here and there its strong ray startled into life some denizen of the forest that even those light passing footsteps Bobby had heard had frightened into immobility. But the faint scampering such small creatures made as they sought safety, or the flutter of wings as some bird or another made its indignant and disturbed way to a fresh roosting place, alone broke the brooding quietude all around. Bobby tried to run more quickly, but in the darkness speed was not easy. After he had collided with a tree or two, stumbled once or twice, felt a branch like the lash of a whip across his face, he slackened to a walk.
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