"I'm thinking we can about decide to give up the Heath Hover business as
a bad job," said Inspector Nashby to his auxiliary, one night as they
sat over whisky and water and pipes, in the inspector's snug private
quarters in Clancehurst.
"Are you?" said the other, in a matter of fact way.
"Why, yes. There's nothing in it, absolutely no clue whatever. So far,
no one has come forward to make even so much as an enquiry as to the
identity of the dead man, and, if you remember, he looked foreign.
Mervyn, too, said he talked with a slightly foreign accent. Now all
that goes to show the thing couldn't well have concerned Mervyn.
Where's the motive? That's what I want to locate. I'm all for motive.
Show motive, and it won't be long before you get your case right home.
That's what I say--always have said."
"Motive--eh?"
"Yes. Motive. Now what the deuce motive could Mervyn have had for
doing away with this chap? First he fishes him out of the ice, in the
middle of a dead cold snow-stormy night, at some risk to himself; then
he takes him in and does for him in the most hospitable manner."
"`Does for him'--Is that a joke, Nashby?"
"Well, no. But what I'm getting at is--supposing Mervyn had a motive
for wanting this fellow in Kingdom Come, all he had to do was to leave
him in the water. See? He needn't have gone to the bother of hauling
him out at all."
"So Stewart seemed to think," was the answer. Stewart had been the
speaker's predecessor in the private investigation of the case, but had
come pretty much to the same conclusion that the local police official
had, that it was hardly worth while going on with. This man had then
appeared on the scene to take it up, rather to Nashby's astonishment.
To the latter he was an "outside" man, but he had come properly
accredited. To tell the truth, he had come as rather a nuisance.
Nashby wanted the discovery of whatever there was to discover to his own
credit. He did not relish any one from outside coming in to benefit by
his gleanings.
"I don't want to say anything against Stewart," went on the last
speaker. "I expect he's an excellent man, in his line. In fact, from
what I hear, I'm sure he is--in his line."
"Well, but--what the devil good are any one of us if it isn't in his
line?" said the inspector, feeling rather nettled, but pushing the cut
glass decanter--an ingredient of an appreciative public testimonial
Tantalus--towards the other as though to cover it. The said other might
have smiled pityingly--he felt like it--but did not.
"That sounds conclusive," he answered. "But--it's just when you get off
your `line' that you make discoveries. Now you know I'm not talking
through my hat. I've had experiences--not in this country--that most of
you here never get. I don't say it to brag, mind, but as a bald
statement of fact."
"I know that, Mr Varne," said Nashby, deferentially. "Well, we don't
get 'em, and it's not our fault if we don't."
"Of course it isn't. It's all a question of opportunity. There are at
least ten men in the world who would stretch a point to get me put out
of the way, and at least four more who are vowed to do it. Out of these
at least one will succeed sooner or later. But in that case it will
puzzle you, and all the Yard, to find the motive."
"You don't say so!" said the inspector, gazing at the speaker, with a
new access of veneration. "As we're alone I don't mind admitting I'm
only a plain man who's worked his way up, but--sink me if I wouldn't
rather be out of the force than have so many desperate scoundrels sworn
to do me down some time or other. Here, you see, we run some one to
earth--he does his stretch and there's an end of it. No malice borne--
and all that."
The man who had been named as Varne could not repress the smile this
time, at what to him was the simple grooviness of this country
policeman, as he defined him in his own mind. But he managed to make
the smile a good-natured one.
"Ah, well, there are shaggier parts of the world than this, Nashby," he
said, mixing his glass again. "Here's to the Heath Hover mystery."
"And its unravelling," answered Nashby, raising his own glass.
"I've been here--let's see, how long have I been here? Three days--and
a half, to be strictly accurate, and I've made one discovery, but only
one."
"What's that?" said the inspector, brisking up.
"Well, it's what I came in to tell you about. But--don't let it go to
the rest of the Force."
"Not me," was the emphatic reply.
"Well then, Mervyn is hiding something."
"Hiding something? Not the thing that did the job? Why there was no
trace of any injury about the man."
"No doubt. But Mervyn is hiding something. When I find that something
we shall have the key to the whole mystery."
"Well, we didn't search the whole house," said Nashby. "It would take
about a week to do that, and only three or four rooms were used at all.
We searched that weird old family vault of a cellar though. There's
nothing loose there. It's firm everywhere. He showed us over it
himself."
"Of course he did. He'd have been a fool if he hadn't. But what he's
hiding isn't in the house at all. It's outside."
"Outside?"
Helston Varne nodded.
"Has a smack of that Moat Farm affair," said Nashby, "only there they
had something definite to find--a body. Here we've nothing. But how
did you get at that for a clue?"
"I've been down here three days--and a half, to be strictly accurate;
there's nothing like accuracy. Yet I've hit upon that much. The other
day I thought I'd hit upon everything, but I hadn't quite. It was just
one of those exciting moments when you miss a thing just by a
hairsbreadth, as it were. But it's getting very warm--very warm
indeed."
Nashby filled a fresh pipe and said nothing. He was looking at the
other enviously. Helston Varne's reputation, among the secret few, was
prodigious. If the scent was really getting very warm from his point of
view, why then the mystery was as good as solved. But then, Nashby
wanted the credit of solving it to be his own.
He wondered if Varne would manage things so that it might be. There was
a good deal of the amateur about Helston Varne he had been given to
understand, clever, marvellously clever as he had proved himself. At
any rate, he was independent of material emolument, or at any rate
seemed so. He seemed good-natured too. Perhaps whatever discovery he
made he would contrive to let him--Nashby--get the benefit of some
appreciable share in it.
The other smoked on in silence, the lamplight full on his strong,
sun-browned, clear-cut face--a sun-brown that showed he had won his
reputation in tougher climates than this--as he had hinted to the
inspector. Moreover, there was a marked difference between the two men
which defined class distinction at a glance.
"Anything more known about this young lady who's stopping at Heath
Hover, Nashby, beyond what you told me?" said Varne suddenly.
"Why, yes. I got at something fresh to-day, only to-day." And the
inspector began to bristle up with a sense, as it were, of renewed
importance. "Yes, only to-day, and I was going to tell you, but I was
waiting to hear what you had to say first, Mr Varne," he added
deferentially. "She's Mervyn's niece right enough, on her mother's
side. Her father suicided. Jumped off a train, after taking a couple
of thousand pound accident insurance tickets, which he handed to her,
with a joking remark, overheard unfortunately for him--for them--by a
station inspector on the platform. Railway company repudiated
liability, and there you are."
"Clumsy--very," pronounced the other, musingly. "Lord, what fools there
are in the world, Nashby. Why, there were half-a-dozen ways of working
that trick, perfectly successfully and carrying far more money with them
too."
"Then she went as a music teacher in a suburban villa, and got cleared
out; I suppose she was too pretty, and the old woman got jealous."
"I don't know about that part of it, but she certainly is pretty," said
Varne. "She's more. She's lovely; and so absolutely uncommon looking.
Well?"
"Then she went to stay with a girl friend--and got ill. Her uncle heard
of her, and got her down to keep house for him. So there you are again.
I heard the particulars only this morning. The Yard can find out
everything, you see."
Whether the other saw or not, he smiled, enigmatically. Perhaps he was
wondering whether "The Yard" knew as much about what his then colleague
had been telling him as he did himself.
"She wasn't there at the time of the--happening," he said. "No, not
till--what? Nearly a month afterwards? And now she has been there over
a fortnight. No, Nashby. Whatever the Yard can find out--or can't,"--
again that smile came forward, "you can rule Miss--er--Seward out of
this business altogether."
The inspector felt a trifle disappointed. He thought he had found a
new, and complicating, and rather interesting element in the case. He
was a little inclined to feel rebellious against Helston Varne's
opinion, but then he had a very considerable respect for Helston Varne.
"The tale about Heath Hover--it's rather interesting," went on the
latter. "I might have said extraordinary, but then, I don't know. I've
met with just such extraordinary cases in the course of my experience,
and have been the means of unravelling at least two of them. Now I'm
going to try and see if this one will hang up at all on the same peg as
our mystery, but--I don't know, I don't know."
He had subsided into a meditative, almost dreamy tone, gazing into the
fire, and emitting slow puffs of smoke. Nashby was eyeing him with a
touch of increased veneration--likewise expectation. He was hoping to
get those narratives before their evening had closed.
"Have another whisky," he said, jumping up with alacrity. "I'm sorry,
I'm sure. I ought to have seen you were empty."
"Thanks. By the way, do you mind telling me again what is precisely the
source of scare that hangs round Heath Hover?"
Inspector Nashby looked as if he rather did mind, for he seemed to
hesitate.
"Oh, it's only a lot of countryside superstition," he said. "But no one
who took the place has ever been able to stick it long. I don't know
either, that any one has ever _seen_ anything. I think they only
_hear_."
The other nodded.
"Just so. Reminds me of one of the cases I was just now referring to,
one I was instrumental in clearing up. That was a matter of sound. I
think I shall really have to obtain entrance to Heath Hover. You say
this man gets it rent free?"
"At a nominal rent, yes."
"Well, why doesn't the owner pull it down, and run up another house on
another site?"
"Because--to put the matter nakedly--he's afraid to."
"Afraid to?"
"Yes. Afraid it would bring him bad luck--fatally bad luck. Old Sir
John Tullibard's a bit of a crank, and believes in that sort of thing.
What's more, he's rather proud of owning a place with that kind of
reputation."
"And that door--what did you say it does?"
"Why, it opens of itself, when something is going to happen. It's a
curious thing that Mervyn should have sworn it did this very thing the
night of this double barrelled event. But he did--and stuck to it."
"Yes. It's certainly curious. Mervyn doesn't strike me as the sort of
man who'd decline to believe his eyesight. He's rather a hard-headed
looking chap I should say, and I can't get anything out of the
surrounding yokels about it. I've expended--let me see--at least two
half crowns in the neighbouring pubs during the three days--and a half--
since I came, trying to make them talk. But they shut up like steel
traps when you try and get them on the subject of Heath Hover."
"So they would," said Nashby, "and for the reason that they hold it to
be dead unlucky even to talk about the yarns that hang around the
place."
"Oh," and Varne smiled. He had noticed that very reluctance about
Nashby himself.
"Do you believe there's anything in all that?" he said, facing the other
with a very direct look. "You, yourself?"
"Well, the fact is, Varne--and there's no denying it--very curious
things do happen in some places. Things that there's no explaining or
clearing up."
"I agree with you, Nashby--as to the first. Very curious things do
happen in some places--yes, very curious things. But as to there being
no explaining them, or clearing them up--why I don't go with you there.
Now look here--I don't say it to brag--but given time, and no
interference, _and_ it being made worth my while, I undertake to
dis-ghost every haunted house in England."
His keen face had lighted up. Nashby looked at him rather admiringly.
The latter was an ordinary square-headed, broad-built policeman, who,
unarmed, would have advanced to arrest an armed criminal without the
smallest hesitation or wavering. But he was country born and bred, and
country superstition is an ingrained thing.
"Well, Mr Varne, at that rate there's a new line in front of you, and
no mistake, and it ought to be a paying one," he rejoined. "Why not
begin on Heath Hover for one?"
"Because none of my conditions would apply to it. Time--that might--no
interference, that certainly would not, for I should have to stay in the
house for a while. And--making it worth it, would apply less still,
since this Mervyn is only a tenant, doesn't seem to care a damn about
the haunting part, and is poor into the bargain you say?"
"Yes. He's hasn't got too much rhino. He was something in India and
retired on a pension. He commuted about half of it to run an invention
which he thought would make his fortune, and it didn't."
"Of course not. Inventions have been known to make fortunes, but
practically never for the inventor. Now how could I get a look in at
Heath Hover? It wouldn't do as being concerned in this case, you know."
"Oh Lord, no," said the other, with some alacrity. "Why, it's supposed
to be dead and forgotten, and that's just the stage at which we expect
to be able to get something out of it--if we ever do at all, that is."
"Hasn't he got any old oak in the place? Panelling, doors--that sort of
thing? Might work in on the connoisseur, scientific lay, don't you
see?"
"I don't know. Perhaps. Yes, now I think of it there's rather a rum
old fireplace. It's in the room where the door is, too, and, now I
think of it again, the door itself is rather a quaint affair, with a
curious handle, and lock, and all that. You could `make up' a bit. You
know--look like a sort of scientific professor, and all that."
"No. I don't think I'll make up. I'll just chance it as I am. And I
think, Nashby, that within the next day or two I shall have found out
all about the inside of Heath Hover--as far as it concerns our case."