_ CHAPTER XVI. 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!" _