The Postmaster's Daughter Part 23

"Wot's this about them amatoor clo'es?" he inquired portentously. "Oo 'as the key of that box?"

"_I_ have," said Elkin. "I locked it after the last performance, and, unless you've been up to any monkey tricks, Tomlin, the duds are there yet."

"You're bitin' me 'ead off all the mornin', Fred," protested the aggrieved landlord. "Fust, the gin was wrong, an' now I'm supposed to 'ave rummidged yur box. Wot for?"

Furneaux popped in.

"My bill ready?" he squeaked.

"No, sir. The train--"

"Leaves at two, but I'm driving to Knoleworth with Superintendent Fowler."

The door closed behind him. Tomlin shook his head.

"Box! Jack-in-the-box, I reckon," he said darkly, turning to a dog-eared ledger.

Neither at Knoleworth nor Victoria did Ingerman catch sight of the detective, though he was anxious either to make the journey in the company of the representative of Scotland Yard or arrange an early appointment with him. True, he was not inclined to place the strange-mannered little man on the same high plane as that suggested by certain London journalists to whom he had spoken. But he wanted to win the confidence of "the Yard" in connection with this case, and the belief that he was being avoided was nettling. He found consolation, of a sort, in the ill.u.s.trated papers. One especially contained two pages of local pictures. "Mr. Grant addressing the crowd," with full text, was very effective, while there were admirable studies of The Hollies and the "scene of the tragedy." His own portrait was not flattering. The sun had etched his Mephistophelian features rather sharply, whereas Grant looked a very fine fellow.

Ingerman would have been more than surprised were he privileged to overhear a conversation which began and ended before he reached his flat in North Kensington.

Furneaux, who had jumped into the fore part of the train at Knoleworth, and was out in a jiffy at Victoria, handed his bag to a station detective, and turned into Vauxhall Bridge Road, one of the quietest of London's main thoroughfares. There he met a big man, dressed in tweeds, whose manifest concern at the moment seemed to center in a rather bad wrapping of a very good cigar.

"Ah! How goes it, Charles?" cried the big man heartily, affecting to be aware of Furneaux's presence when the latter had walked nearly a hundred yards down a comparatively deserted street.

"What's wrong with the toofa?" inquired Furneaux testily.

"My own carelessness. Stupid things, bands on cigars.... Well, what's the rush?"

"There's a train to Steynholme at five o'clock. I want you to take hold.

I must have help. Like your cigar, this case has come unstuck."

Mr. James Leander Winter, Chief Inspector under the Criminal Investigation Department, whistled softly.

"Tut, tut!" he said. "One can never trust the newspapers. Reading this morning's particulars, it looked dead easy."

"Tell me how it struck you. Sometimes the uninformed brain is vouchsafed a gleam of unconscious genius."

Winter appeared to be devoting his mind to circ.u.mventing the vagaries of a fragile tobacco-leaf. He was a man of powerful build, over forty, heavy but active, deep-chested, round-headed, with bulging blue eyes which radiated kindliness and strength of character. The press photographer described him accurately to Grant. The average Londoner would have taken him for a county gentleman on a visit to the Agricultural Show at Islington, with a morning at Tattersall's as a variant. Yet, Sam Weller's extensive and peculiar knowledge of London compared with his as a freshman's with a don's of a university. It would be hard to a.s.sess, in coin of the realm, the value of the political and social secrets stowed away in that big head.

"First, I must put a question or two," he said, smiling at a baby which cooed at him from the shaded depths of a pa.s.sing perambulator. "Is there another woman?"

"Yes, the postmaster's daughter, Doris Martin."

"Shy, pretty little bird, of course?"

"Everything that is good and beautiful."

"Is Grant a Lothario?"

"Excellent chap. Quarter of an hour before the murder he was giving Doris a lesson in astronomy in the garden of The Hollies."

"Never heard it called _that_ before."

"This time the statement happens to be strictly accurate."

"Honest Injun?"

"I'm sure of it. If anything, the death of Adelaide Melhuish cleared the scales off their eyes. Those two have never kissed or squeezed--yet.

They'll be starting quite soon now."

"How old is Doris?"

"Nineteen."

"But a really good-looking girl of nineteen must have had admirers before Grant went to the village."

"She had, and has. Having educated herself out of the rut, however, she left many runners at the post. One is persistent--a youngish horse-coper named Elkin. Adelaide Melhuish probably saw her with Grant. Neither Doris nor Grant knew that Adelaide Melhuish, as such, was in Steynholme. That is to say, the girl had seen Miss Melhuish in the post office, and recognized her as a famous actress, but that is all. And now I shan't tell you any more, or you'll know all that I know, which is too much."

The cigar was behaving itself at last, having burnt down to the fracture, so Winter's thoughts could be given exclusively to the less important matter of the Steynholme affair.

"To begin with," he said instantly. "Ingerman can establish a cast-iron alibi."

"So I imagined. But he's a bad lot. I throw in that item gratuitously."

The oddly-a.s.sorted pair walked in silence until Vauxhall Bridge was in sight. Winter pulled out a watch.

"What time did you say my train left Victoria?" he inquired.

"Plenty of time yet to make your guess and listen to further details,"

scoffed Furneaux.

"Frankly, I give it up. But, if I must share in the hunt, I tell you now that, metaphorically speaking, I shall cling to the postmaster's daughter till torn away by sheer force of evidence."

Furneaux dug his colleague in the ribs.

"That's the effect of constant a.s.sociation with me, James," he cackled gleefully. "Ten years ago you would have pounced on Elkin. You've hit it!

I'm a prood mon the day. The pupil is equaling the master."

"You little rat, I had hanged my first murderer before you knew the meaning of _habeas corpus_! Let's turn now, and get to business."

Few Treasury barristers, leading for the Crown, could have marshaled the facts with such lucidity and fairness as Furneaux during that saunter to Victoria Station.

"Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice," said Oth.e.l.lo to Lodovico, and these Scotland Yard men, charged with so great a responsibility, never forgot the great-hearted Moor's advice.

When Winter took his seat in the train at five o'clock he could have drawn a plan of Steynholme, which he had never seen, and marked thereon the exact position of each house mentioned in this record. Moreover, he was acquainted with the chief characters by sight, as it were. And, finally, he and Furneaux had arranged a plan of campaign.

Furneaux refreshed a jaded intellect by an evening at the opera. Next morning, at eleven o'clock, he was inquiring for Mr. Ingerman at an office in a certain alley off Cornhill.