THE LEAD MINE
Starmidge and Polke presently left--to walk down to the railway station
with the bewildered clerk; when they had gone, Betty turned to Neale,
who was hanging about her sitting-room with no obvious intention of
leaving it.
"While these people are doing what they can in their way, is there
nothing we can do in ours?" she asked. "I hate sitting here doing
nothing at all! You're a free man now, Wallie--can't you suggest
something?"
Neale was thoroughly enjoying his first taste of liberty. He felt as if
he had just been released from a long term of imprisonment. To be
absolutely free to do what he liked with himself, during the whole of a
spring day, was a sensation so novel that he was holding closely to it,
half-fearful that it might all be a dream from which it would be a
terrible thing to awake--to see one of Chestermarke's ledgers under his
nose. And this being a wonderfully fine morning, he had formed certain
sly designs of luring Betty away into the country, and having the whole
day with her. A furtive glance at her, however, showed him that Miss
Fosdyke's thoughts and ideas just then were entirely business-like, but
a happy inspiration suggested to him that business and pleasure might be
combined.
"We ought to go and see if that tinker chap's found out or heard
anything," he said. "You remember he promised to keep his eyes and ears
open. And we might do a little looking round the country for ourselves:
I haven't much faith in those local policemen and gamekeepers. Why not
make a day of it, going round? I know a place--nice old inn, the other
side of Ellersdeane--where we can get some lunch. Much better making
inquiries for ourselves," he concluded insinuatingly, "than sitting
about waiting for news."
"Didn't I say so?" exclaimed Betty. "Come on, then!--I'm ready. Where
first?"
"Let's see the tinker first," said Neale. "He's a sharp man--he may have
something else to tell by now."
He led his companion out of the town by way of Scarnham Bridge, pointing
out Joseph Chestermarke's gloomy house to her as they passed it.
"I'd give a lot," he remarked, as they turned on to the open moor which
led towards Ellersdeane Hollow, "to know if either of the Chestermarkes
really did know anything about that chap Hollis coming to the town on
Saturday. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if they did. Those detective
fellows like Starmidge are very clever in their way, but they always
seem to me to stop thinking a bit too soon. Now both Starmidge and Polke
seem to take it for certain that this Hollis went to meet Horbury when
he left the Station Hotel. There's no proof that he went to meet
Horbury--none!"
"Whom might he have gone to meet, then?" demanded Betty.
"You listen to me a bit," said Neale. "I've been thinking it over.
Hollis comes to the Station Hotel and uses their telephone. Mrs. Pratt
overhears him call up Chestermarke's Bank--that's certain. Then she goes
away, about her business. An interval elapses. Then she hears some
appointment made, with somebody, along the river bank, for that evening.
But--that interval during which Mrs. Pratt didn't overhear? How do we
know that the person with whom Hollis began his conversation was the
same person with whom he finished it? Come, now!"
"Wallie, that's awfully clever of you!" exclaimed Betty. "How did you
come to think of such an ingenious notion?"
"Worked it out," answered Neale. "This way! Hollis comes down to
Scarnham to see Chestermarke's Bank--which means one of the partners. He
rings up the bank. He speaks to somebody there. How do we know that
somebody was Horbury? We don't! It may have been Mrs. Carswell. Now
supposing the real person Hollis wanted to see was either Gabriel or
Joseph Chestermarke? Very well--this person who answered from the bank
would put Hollis on to either of them at once. Gabriel has a telephone
at the Warren: Joseph has a telephone at his home yonder behind us. It
may have been with either Gabriel or Joseph that Hollis finished his
conversation. And--if it was finished with one of them, it was, in my
opinion, whatever that's worth, with Master Joseph!"
"What makes you think that?" asked Betty, startled by the suggestion.
Neale laid a hand on the girl's arm and turned her round to face the
town. He lifted his stick and pointed at Joseph Chestermarke's high
roof, towering above the houses around it; then he swept the stick
towards the river and its course, plainly to be followed, in the
direction of the station.
"You see Joseph's house there," he said. "You see the river--the path
along its bank--going right down to the meadow opposite the Station
Hotel? Very well--now, supposing it was Joseph with whom Hollis wound up
that telephone talk, suppose it was Joseph whom Hollis was to see. What
would happen? Joseph knew that Hollis was at the Station Hotel. The
straightest and easiest way from the Station Hotel to Joseph's house
is--straight along the river bank. Now then, call on your memory! What
did Mrs. Pratt tell us? 'When I was going back to the bar,' says Mrs.
Pratt, 'I heard more. "Along the river-side," says the gentleman.
"Straight on from where I am--all right." Then, after a minute, "At
seven-thirty, then?" he says. "All right--I'll meet you." And after
that,' concludes Mrs. Pratt, 'he rings off.' Now, why shouldn't it be
Joseph Chestermarke that he was going to meet?--remember, again, the
river-side path leads straight to Joseph's house. Come!--Mrs. Pratt's
story doesn't point conclusively to Horbury at all. It's as I say--the
telephone conversation may have begun with Horbury, but it may have
ended with--somebody else. And what I say is--who was the precise
person whom Hollis went to meet?"
"Are you going to tell all that to Starmidge?" asked Betty admiringly.
"Because I'm sure it's never entered his head--so far."
"Depends," replied Neale. "Let's see if the tinker has anything to tell.
He's at home, anyway. There's his fire."
A spiral of blue smoke, curling high above the green and gold of the
gorse bushes, revealed Creasy's whereabouts. He had shifted his camp
since their first meeting with him: his tilted cart, his tethered pony,
and his fire, were now in a hollow considerably nearer the town. Neale
and Betty looked down into his retreat to find him busily mending a
collection of pots and pans, evidently gathered up during his round of
the previous day. He greeted his visitors with a smile, and fetched a
three-legged stool from his cart for Betty's better accommodation.
"Heard anything?" asked Neale, seating himself on a log of wood.
The tinker pointed to several newspapers which lay near at hand, kept
from blowing away by a stone placed on the uppermost.
"Only what's in these," he answered. "I've read all that--so I'm pretty
well posted up, mister. I've just read this morning's--bought it in the
town when I went to fetch some bread. Queer affair altogether, I call
it!"
"Have you looked round about at all?" asked Betty.
"I've been a good bit over the Hollow, miss," answered Creasy. "But
it's a stiff job seeking anything here. There's nobody knows what a
wilderness this Hollow is until they begin exploring it.
Holes--corners--nooks--crannies--bracken and bushes--it is a wilderness,
and that's a fact! I'd engage to hide myself safely in this square mile
for many a week, against a hundred seekers. It wouldn't a bit surprise
me, you know, if it comes out in the end that Mr. Horbury, after all,
did fall down one of these old shafts. I couldn't believe it possible at
first, knowing that he knew every in and out of the place, but I'm
beginning to think he may have done. There's only one thing against that
theory."
"What?" asked Betty.
"Where's the other gentleman?" answered the tinker. "If they came
together on to this waste, one couldn't fall down a shaft without the
other knowing it, eh? And it's scarcely likely they'd both fall down."
Neale glanced at Betty and shook his head.
"There you are, you see!" he muttered. "They all hang to the notion that
Hollis did meet Horbury! Mr. Horbury may have been alone, after all, you
know," he went on, turning to Creasy. "There's no proof that the other
gentleman was with him."
"Aye, well--I'm going on what these paper accounts say," answered
Creasy. "They all take it for granted that those two were together.
Well, about these old shaftings, mister--I did notice something very
early this morning that I thought might be looked into."
"What is it?" asked Neale. "Don't let's lose any chance of finding
anything out, however small it may be."
The tinker finished mending a kettle and set it aside amongst other
renovated articles. He lifted the pan of solder off the fire, set it
aside, too, and got up.
"Come this way, then," he said. "I was going in to Scarnham this noon to
tell Mr Polke about it, but as long as you're here----"
He led the way through the thick gorse and heather until he came to a
narrow track which wound across the moor in the direction of the town.
There he paused, pointing towards Ellersdeane on the one hand, towards
Scarnham on the other.
"You see this track, mister?" he said. "You'll notice that it goes to
Ellersdeane village that way, and to Scarnham this. Of course, you can't
see it all the way in either direction, but you can take my word for
it--it does. It comes out at Ellersdeane by the duck-pond, at Scarnham
by the bridge at the foot of Cornmarket. People who know it would follow
it if they wanted a short cut across the moor from the town to the
village--or the opposite, as you might say. Now then, look here--a bit
this way."
He preceded them along the narrow track until, on an open space in the
moorland, they came to one of the old lead-mine shafts, the mouth of
which had been fenced in by a roughly built wall of stone gathered from
its immediate surroundings. In this wall, extending from its parapet to
the ground, was a wide gap: the stones which had been displaced to make
it had disappeared into the cavernous opening.
"Now then!" said the tinker, turning on his companions with the
inquiring look of a man who advances a theory which may or may not be
accepted as reasonable, "you see that? What I'd like to know is--is that
a recently made gap? It's difficult to tell. If this bit of a stone
fence had been built with mortar, one could have told. But it's never
had mortar or lime in it!--it's just rough masonry, as you see--stones
picked up off the moor, like all these fences round the old shafts.
But--there's the gap right enough! Do you know what I'm thinking?"
"No!" murmured Betty, with a glance of fear and doubt at the black vista
which she saw through the gap. "But--don't be afraid to speak."
"I'm thinking this," continued the tinker: "Supposing a man was
following this track from Ellersdeane to Scarnham, or t'other way about,
as it might be--supposing he was curious to look down one of these old
shafts--supposing he looked down this one, which stands, as you see, not
two yards off the very track he was following--supposing he leaned his
weight on this rotten bit of fencing--supposing it gave way? What?"
Neale, who had been listening intently, made a movement as if to lay his
hand on the grey stones. Betty seized him impulsively.
"Don't, Wallie!" she exclaimed. "That frightens me!"
Creasy lifted his foot and pressed it against the stones at one edge of
the gap. Before even that slight pressure three or four blocks gave way
and dropped inward--the sound of their fall came dully from the depths
beneath.
"You see," said the tinker, "it's possible. It might be. And--as you can
tell from the time it takes a stone to drop--it's a long way down there.
They're very deep, these old mines."
Neale turned from the broken wall and looked narrowly at the ground
about it.
"I don't see any signs of anybody being about here recently," he
remarked. "There are no footmarks."
"There couldn't be, mister," said Creasy. "You could march a regiment of
soldiers over this moorland grass for many an hour, and there'd be no
footprints on it when they'd gone--it's that wiry and strong. No!--if
half a dozen men had been standing about here when one fell in--or if
two or three men had come here to throw another man in," he added
significantly, "there'd be no footmarks. Try it--you can't grind an
iron-shod heel like mine into this turf."
"It's all very horrible!" said Betty, still staring at the black gap
with its suggestions of subterranean horror. "If one only knew----"
The tinker turned and looked at the two young people as if he were
estimating their strength.
"What are you wondering about?" asked Neale.
Creasy smiled as he glanced again at Betty.
"Well," he replied, "you're a pretty strong young fellow, mister, I take
it, and the young lady looks as if she'd got a bit of good muscle about
her. If you two could manage one end of a rope, I'd go down into that
shaft at the other end--a bit of the way, at any rate. And then--I'd let
down a lantern and see if there's aught to be seen."
Betty turned anxiously to Neale, and Neale looked the tinker over with
appraising eyes.
"I could pull you up myself," he answered. "You're no great weight. And
haven't those shafts got props and stays down the side?"
"Aye, but they'll be thoroughly rotten by this," said Creasy. "Well,
we'll try it. Come to my cart--I've plenty of stuff there."
"You're sure there's no danger?" asked Betty. "Don't imperil yourself!"
"No danger, so long as you two'll stick to this end of the rope," said
Creasy. "I shan't go too far down."
The tilted cart proved to contain all sorts of useful things: they
presently returned to the shaft with two coils of stout rope, a crowbar,
a lantern attached to a length of strong cord, and a great
sledge-hammer, with which the tinker drove the crowbar firmly into the
ground some ten or twelve feet from the edge of the gap. He made one end
of the first rope fast to this; the other end he securely knotted about
his waist; one end of the second rope he looped under his armpits, and
handed the other to Neale; then, lighting his lantern, he prepared to
descend, having first explained the management of the ropes to his
assistants.
"All you've got to do," he said reassuringly to Betty, "is to hold on to
this second rope and let me down, gradual-like. When I say 'Pull,' draw
up--I'll help, hand over hand, up this first rope. Simple enough!--and I
shan't go too far."
Nevertheless, he exhausted the full length of both ropes, and it seemed
a long time before they heard anything of him. Betty, frightened of what
she might hear, fearful lest Neale should go too near the edge of the
shaft, began to get nervous at the delay, and it was with a great sense
of relief that she at last heard the signal.
The tinker came hand over hand up the stationary rope, helped by the
second one: his face, appearing over the edge of the gap, was grave and
at first inscrutable. He shook himself when he stepped above ground, as
if he wanted to shake off an impression: then he turned and spoke in a
whisper.
"It's as I thought it might be!" he said. "There's a dead man down
there!"