The Chestermarke Instinct/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
ELLERSDEANE HOLLOW
Neale dropped into a chair and lifted a despairing countenance to his downright questioner.
"I don't know!" he said. "I know—nothing!"
"That is—beyond what I've already been told?" suggested the girl.
"Beyond what you've been told—exactly," replied Neale. "I'm literally bewildered. I've been going about all day as if—as if I were dreaming, or having a nightmare, or—something. I don't understand it at all. I saw Mr. Horbury, of course, on Saturday—he was all right when I left him at the bank. He said nothing that suggested anything unusual. The whole thing is—a real facer! To me—anyhow."
Betty Fosdyke devoted a whole minute to taking a good look at her companion: Neale, on his part, made a somewhat shyer examination of her. He remembered her as a long-legged little girl who had no great promise of good looks: he was not quite sure that she had grown into good looks now. But she was an eminently bright and vivacious young woman, strong, healthy, vigorous, with fine eyes and teeth and hair, and a colour that betokened an intimate acquaintance with outdoor life. And already, in the conversation at the bank, and in Polke's report of his interview with him, he had learnt that she had developed certain characteristics which he faintly remembered in her as a child, when she had insisted on having her own way amongst other children.
"You've grown into quite a handsome young man, Wallie!" she observed suddenly, with a frank laugh. "I shouldn't have thought you would, somehow. Am I changed?"
"I should say—not in character," answered Neale shyly. "I remember you always wanted to be top dog!"
"It's my fate!" she said, with a sigh. "I've such a lot of people and things to look after—one has to be top dog, whether one wants to or not. But this affair—what's to be done?"
"I understand from Polke that you've already done everything," replied Neale.
"I've given him orders to spare neither trouble nor expense," she asserted. "He's to send for the very best detective they can give him from headquarters in London, and search is to be made. Because—now, Wallie, tell me truthfully—you don't believe for one moment that my uncle has run away with things?"
"Not for one second!" asserted Neale stoutly. "Never did!"
"Then—there's foul play!" exclaimed Betty. "And I'll spend my last penny to get at the bottom of it! Here I am, and here I stick, until I've found my uncle, or discovered what's happened to him. And listen—do you think those two men across there are to be trusted?"
Neale shook his head as if in appeal to her.
"I'm their clerk, you know," he replied. "I hate being there at all, but I am there. I believe they're men of absolute probity as regards business matters—personally, I'm not very fond of either."
"Fond!" she exclaimed. "My dear boy!—Joseph is a slimy sneak, and Gabriel is a bloodless sphinx—I hate both of them!"
Neale laughed and gave her a look of comprehension.
"You haven't changed, Betty," he said. "I'm to call you Betty, though you are grown up?"
"Since it's the only name I possess, I suppose you are," she answered. "But now—what can we do—you and I? After all, we're the nearest people my uncle has in this town. Do let's do something! I'm not the sort to sit talking—I want action! Can't you suggest something we can do?"
"There's one thing," replied Neale, after a moment's thought. "Lord Ellersdeane suggested that possibly Mr. Horbury, hearing that the Ellersdeanes had got home on Saturday, put the jewels in his pocket and started out to Ellersdeane with them. I know the exact path he'd have taken in that case, and I thought of following it this evening—one might come across something, or hear something, you know."
"Take me with you, as soon as we've had dinner," she said. "It'll be a beginning. I mean to turn this neighbourhood upside down for news—you'll see. Some person or persons must have seen my uncle on Saturday night!—a man can't disappear like that. It's impossible!"
"Um!—but men do disappear," remarked Neale. "What I'm hoping is that there'll eventually—and quickly—be some explanation of this disappearance, and that Mr. Horbury hasn't met with—shall I put it plainly?"
"You'd better put anything plainly to me," she answered. "I don't understand other methods."
"It's possible he may have been murdered, you know," said Neale quietly.
Betty got up from her chair and went over to the window to look out on the Market-Place. She stood there some time in silence.
"It shall be a bad job for any man who murdered him if that is so," she said at last. "I was very fond of my uncle."
"So was I," said Neale. "But I say—no past tenses yet! Aren't we a bit previous? He may be all right."
"Ring the bell and let's hurry up that dinner," she commanded. "I didn't make it clear that we want it as early as possible. I want to get out, and to see where he went—I want to do something active!"
But Miss Betty Fosdyke was obliged to adapt herself to the somewhat leisurely procedure of highly respectable country-town hotels, whose cooks will not be hurried, and it was already dusk, and the moonlight was beginning to throw shadows of gable and spire over the old Market-Place, when she and Neale set out on their walk.
"All the better," said Neale. "This is just about the time that he went out on Saturday night, and under very similar conditions. Now we'll take the precise path that he'd have taken if he was on his way to Ellersdeane."
He led his companion to a corner of the Market-Place, and down a narrow alley which terminated on an expanse of open ground at the side of the river. There he made her pause and look round.
"Now if we're going to do the thing properly," he said, "just attend, and take notice of what I point out. The town, as you see, stands on this ridge above us. Here we are at the foot of the gardens and orchards which slope down from the backs of the houses on this side of the Market-Place. There is the gate of the bank-house orchard. According to Mrs. Carswell, Mr. Horbury came out of that gate on Saturday night. What did he do then? He could have turned to the left, along this river bank, or to the right, also along the river bank. But, if he meant to walk out to Ellersdeane—which he would reach in well under an hour—he would cross this foot-bridge and enter those woods. That's what we've got to do."
He led his companion across a narrow bridge, over a strip of sward at the other side of the river, and into a grove of fir which presently deepened and thickened as it spread up a gently shelving hillside. The lights of the town behind them disappeared; the gloom increased; presently they were alternately crossing patches of moonlight and plunging into expanses of blackness. And Betty, after stumbling over one or two of the half-exposed roots which lay across the rough path, slipped a hand into Neale's arm.
"You'll have to play guide, Wallie, unless you wish me to break my neck," she laughed. "My town eyes aren't accustomed to these depths of gloom and solitude. And now," she went on, as Neale led her confidently forward through the wood, "let's talk some business. I want to know about those two—the Chestermarkes. For I've an uneasy feeling that there's more in this affair than's on the surface, and I want to know all about the people I'm dealing with. Just remember—beyond the mere fact of their existence and having seen them once or twice, years ago, I don't know anything about them. What sort of men are they—as individuals?"
"Queer!" replied Neale. "They're both queer. I don't know much about them. Nobody does. They're all right as business men, much respected and all that, you know. But as private individuals they're decidedly odd. They're both old bachelors, at least Gabriel's an old one, and Joseph is a youngish one. They live sort of hermit lives, as far as one can make out. Gabriel lives at the old house which I'll show you when we get out of this wood—you'll see the roofs, anyhow, in this moonlight. Joseph lives in another old house, but in the town, at the end of Cornmarket. What they do with themselves at home, Heaven knows! They don't go into such society as there is; they take no part in the town's affairs. There's a very good club here for men of their class—they don't belong to it. You can't get either of 'em to attend a meeting—they keep aloof from everything. But they both go up to London a great deal—they're always going. But they never go together—when Gabriel's away, Joseph's at home; when Joseph's off, Gabriel's on show. There's always one Mr. Chestermarke to be found at the bank. All the same, Mr. Horbury was the man who did all the business with customers in the ordinary way. So far as I know banking," concluded Neale, "I should say he was trusted and confided in more than most bank managers are."
"Did they seem very much astonished when they found he'd gone?" asked Betty. "Did it seem a great shock, a real surprise?"
"The cleverest man living couldn't tell what either Gabriel or Joseph Chestermarke thinks about anything," answered Neale. "You know what Gabriel's face is like—a stone image! And Joseph always looks as if he was sneering at you, a sort of soft, smiling sneer. No, I couldn't say they showed surprise, and I don't know what they've found out—they're the closest, most reserved men about their own affairs that you could imagine!"
"But—they say some of their securities are missing," remarked Betty. "They'll have to let the exact details be known, won't they?"
"Depends—on them," replied Neale. "They'll only do what they like. And they don't love you for coming on the scene, I assure you!"
"But I'm here, nevertheless!" said Betty. "And here I stop! Wallie, haven't you got even a bit of a theory about all this?"
"Can't say that I have!" confessed Neale woefully. "I'm not a very brilliant hand at thinking. The only thing I can think of is that Mr. Horbury, knowing Lord Ellersdeane had got home on Saturday, thought he'd hand back those jewels as soon as possible, and set off in the evening with that intention—possibly to be robbed and murdered on the way. Sounds horrible—but honestly I can't think of any other theory."
Betty involuntarily shivered and glanced about her at the dark cavernous spaces of the wood, which had now thickened into dense masses of oak and beech. She took a firmer grip of Neale's arm.
"And he'd come through here!" she exclaimed. "How dangerous!—with those things in his pocket!"
"Oh, but he'd think nothing of it!" answered Neale. "He was used to walking at night—he knew every yard of this neighbourhood. Besides, he'd know very well that nobody would know what he had on him. What I'd like to know is—supposing my theory's right, and that he was taking these jewels to Ellersdeane, how did anybody get to know that he had them? For the Chestermarkes didn't know they'd been given to him, and I didn't—nobody at the bank knew."
A sudden turn in the path brought them to the edge of the wood, and they emerged on a broad plateau of rough grass, from beneath which a wide expanse of landscape stretched away, bathed just then in floods of moonlight. Neale paused and waved his stick towards the shadowy distances and over the low levels which lay between.
"Ellersdeane Hollow!" he said.
Betty paused too, looking silently around. She saw an undulating, broken stretch of country, half-heath, half-covert, covering a square mile or so of land, houseless, solitary. In its midst rose a curiously shaped eminence or promontory, at the highest point of which some ruin or other lifted gaunt, shapeless walls against the moonlit sky. Far down beneath it, in a depression amongst the heath-clad undulations, a fire glowed red in the gloom. And on the further side of this solitude, amidst groves and plantations, the moonlight shone on the roofs and gables of half-hidden houses. Over everything hung a deep silence.
"A wild and lonely scene!" she said.
Neale raised his stick again and began to point.
"All this in front of us is called Ellersdeane Hollow," he remarked. "It's not just one depression, you see—it's a tract of unenclosed land. It's dangerous to cross, except by the paths—it's honeycombed all over with disused lead-mines—some of the old shafts are a tremendous depth. All the same, you see, there's some tinker chap, or some gipsies, camped out down there and got a fire. That old ruin, up on the crag there, is called Ellersdeane Tower—one of Lord Ellersdeane's ancestors built it for an observatory—this path'll lead us right beneath it."
"Is this the path he would have taken if he'd gone to Ellersdeane on Saturday night?" asked Betty.
"Precisely—straight ahead, past the Tower," answered Neale. "And there is Ellersdeane itself, right away in the distance, amongst its trees. There!—where the moonlight catches it. Now let your eye follow that far line of wood, over the tops of the trees about Ellersdeane village—do you see where the moonlight shines on another high roof? That's Gabriel Chestermarke's place—the Warren."
"So—he and Lord Ellersdeane are neighbours!" remarked Betty.
"Neighbours at a distance of a mile—and who do no more than nod to each other," answered Neale. "Lord Ellersdeane and Mr. Horbury were what you might call friends, but I don't believe his lordship ever spoke ten words with either of the Chestermarkes until this morning. I tell you the Chestermarkes are regular hermits!—when they're at home or about Scarnham, anyhow. Now let's go as far as the Tower—you can see all over the country from that point."
Betty followed her guide down a narrow path which led in and out through the undulations of the Hollow until it reached the foot of the promontory on which stood the old ruin that made such a prominent landmark. Seen at close quarters Ellersdeane Tower was a place of much greater size and proportion than it had appeared from the edge of the wood, and the path to its base was steep and rocky. And here the loneliness in which she and Neale had so far walked came to an end—on the edge of the promontory, outlined against the moonlit sky, two men stood, talking in low tones.