Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/313

 show you," answered the man. He led Wedgwood and the Superintendent to the front of the inn and pointed across the valley to a low ridge of hillside that rose beyond the works of the colliery. "Do you see a house up yonder, edge of a wood?" he asked. "That's Malcolmson's! A roughish way it 'ud be, too, that night—either going there or coming back—worse, of course, coming back, if they bided there any length of time. It started to be real bad that night between six and seven."

"How do you get up there?" asked the Superintendent.

"Well, from Mortover Grange you'd go up a lane that cuts across where they're making the new coal-pit," replied the man. "Malcolmson's house lies right behind the new works—overlooks 'em. Of course that lane's choked with snow—still, you could make your way there, with a bit o' discomfort."

The Superintendent turned back into the inn, and getting the men together, invited them to form search parties amongst themselves and to scour the districts in which Levigne and Janet Clagne in one direction and Philip Mortover in another had last been heard of. He had no difficulty in getting a ready response; in a few moments various parties were off, and he and Wedgwood essayed the climb up the hillside