The Lost Mr. Linthwaite/Chapter 26

, before sitting down to dinner that evening, had been out in the town, doing a little necessary shopping. Had Crabbe followed him from shop to shop his police-inspector's mind might have attached suspicion in Brixey's purchases.

For at one shop Brixey bought an electric lamp of the best make obtainable, and at another a pair of cloth shoes, thickly soled with felt; at a third he purchased a small but eminently business-like revolver and had it fitted with cartridges.

When he went out of the "Mitre" after darkness had fallen over Selchester he had all these things in his pockets, ready for use.

In the course of his professional career Brixey had more than once played the part of a spy. More than once, too, he had run himself into queer situations. If was no empty boast on his part when he told Willett that if he risked danger on this occasion it would only be for the twentieth time.

But he was a cool hand, and full of resourcefulness and of ideas, and he had already worked out the plans which he intended to follow that evening.

He knew from observation that after dark the grounds of the old Priory were closed; accordingly there would be no one about to witness his movements. His notion was to get in there, unobserved, and to do a little quiet spying round the caretaker's dwelling.

There might be windows with undrawn curtains; there might be something to hear at doors; some accidental circumstance might ensue which would be of immense value. And if none of these things materialised he meant to walk boldly in on the father and daughter and tax Debbie Lee with having been in possession of two five-pound notes belonging to Mr. John Linthwaite.

Everything was very quiet at the far extremities of the little town. Such Selchester folk as went abroad at night always congregated in the centre of the place, around the old Market Cross; up there, near the North Bar and its adjacent walls, there was nobody about.

While he waited at a corner opposite the "Lame Hussar," two sounds broke the silence. Behind him, down a narrow side street which his wanderings in the town had taught him to know as leading beneath the walls to the western extremity of Selchester, and so to the high road which ran, towards Portsmouth, he heard the coming of a motor-car.

It stopped a little distance away down this street; moved again. Brixey, stepping a yard or two into the roadway, saw it turn round—a car with back and front lights. It pulled up and remained stationary by the kerb, and at that moment he heard the second sound.

At the end of the narrow entry which led past the "Lame Hussar" to the entrance to the Priory grounds his quick ear caught the closing of a gate. And a second later all the clocks of Selchester, from that of the cathedral to those of the various small churches, struck nine.

Brixey slipped noiselessly into the shelter of the deep porch of an old house behind him. He had seen two figures coming along from the Priory gates. In another moment they passed him, walking swiftly, and in the faint light from the windows of the tavern he recognised them.

Lee and his daughter.

Brixey put his head out of the porch and watched. They were moving on as silently as swiftly. He strained his ears to catch a word from either as they went by, and caught nothing.

But his eyes had better luck than his ears. He saw that Lee was overcoated and capped as if for a journey; that Debbie was similarly apparelled. And Lee tugged a heavy portmanteau, while his daughter carried two smaller bags, one in each hand. This, clearly, decided Brixey, was a departure, and perhaps a hurried one.

As he now expected, father and daughter crossed the end of the main street, hurrying their steps as they passed the gas—lamps at the corners, and made for the waiting motor-car down the side alley. He saw them get into it, saw the driver move round to the front, heard him start his engine; a few seconds later the car went swiftly away. And Brixey knew then that the coast was clear for him, and he wondered if he had been wise in letting these two highly-suspicious characters depart without questions. For he was sure by that time that whatever share Miss Deborah Lee had taken in the mystery which centred in the Priory, now so dark and silent before him, her father was a participant in.

But, after all, the going-away left him free to explore, unchecked, probably unwatched, unless, indeed, there were other conspirators left behind.

After a few moments of reflection, Brixey slipped along the street to the Priory gates and let himself into the grounds by means of Willett's key. In there everything was dark and very quiet. Nevertheless, he wished to be quiet himself, and once inside the walls he turned aside to a rustic arbour which he had noticed on his previous visits, and there took off his boots and put on the felt-soled shoes.

Having felt that the revolver in his hip-pocket was loose and handy, and that the electric lamp was ready for immediate pulling out, Brixey went away up the broad gravelled walk in the direction of the ruins.

There was not a gleam of light from the front of the caretaker's house. Silent as a shadow Brixey glided across the front, peering in at the windows, listening at the doors.

The whole place was tomb-like in its quietness. The windows were fast and the door under the portico was fast. If the father and daughter had left by that entrance they had taken the key with them.

But Brixey, in his previous observations of the Priory and its grounds, had noticed that there was a back entrance to the caretaker’s house. The house itself had been fashioned and rearranged out of the lower stories of we great, square tower of the Priory.

At the rear of the tower, among the ruins of one of the transepts, there was a yard, from which admittance could be had to the caretaker's premises. He made his way. through the old masses of fallen masonry to this, passed through a hedge of laurel bushes, and entered the yard. And there, in one of the lower windows, he saw a faint gleam of light, evidently from a fire. To make his way to that window was the work of a moment. When he looked cautiously through the bottom panes he was astonished to see that on the hearth of what was evidently the living-room of the house quite a respectable fire was burning.

Clearly, then, the departure of the Lees had been an unexpected one. The fire had surely been made up for the evening. But there was another piece of evidence on that point. In the firelight he saw that the table was spread for supper. He saw, too, that the meal had been interrupted.

So convinced was Brixey by this time that the place was empty, that he went away from the window towards the back door. But as he crossed the bit of yard his foot struck something soft, soft yet firm, which lay on the pavement in his path.

There was a peculiar sensation about this contact in the dark, and he stopped and put down a hand—to encounter something warm and yet suspiciously still.

He had a swift intuition of what this was before even he drew out his lamp and, carefully shading it within his jacket, bent down to look. There at his feet lay an Airedale terrier, dead, but not long dead.

The poor brute was warm. Not so long since its life had coursed joyously enough through its veins, and Brixey uttered a malediction on the folk who had so callously taken it. But there was no use in indulging in sentiment, and he switched off his lamp and went on to the door.

That, of course, he said to himself, was the dog of which Fanshawe Byfield had spoken—the excellent house-dog. Why had Lee poisoned it just before leaving? That, surely, was another proof of hasty departure.

Had the dog been left alive he would, even if chained up when Lee and his daughter went away, have followed in their tracks on his release. Therefore, argued Brixey, it was very evident that they wished to prevent any risk, to obviate any chance of being followed.

Folk who do not wish to be followed, he further argued, have some very good reason for desiring to escape pursuit. That, at any rate, seemed clear.

With a quietness that would have done credit to a professional burglar, Brixey crept along to the kitchen door and tried the latch. He was not surprised to find that it tipped easily. The door was unlocked and unbolted. He was inside it in another second and had glided into the living-room and through it to a little hall which divided it from the front of the house.

There in the darkness he stood for a while, listening. At first not a sound came from the heights above, but presently a breath of chilly air blew down on him, and he knew that somewhere up above him there was a window open. He heard a slight rattle of its frame in a casement.

On that slight breeze, too, came the hooting of an owl in the trees outside the ruins—a sound that fitted well with the character of the old place and with the circumstances. And, curious and eager as he was, Brixey felt a certain sense of eeriness when he heard that hooting, and his heart beat a little quicker as he groped about him, found a stair, and quietly tiptoed up it.

He scarcely knew why he was adopting a mouse-like quiet in this place, which he was perfectly sure, was absolutely free of its usual denizens. But was his uncle interned somewhere in the upper regions? He was going to search that tower from bottom to top, now that he was in it.

When he came to the first landing he cautiously burned on the gleam of his electric lamp, and, shrouding it with his jacket, looked round him. A door stood open on his right hand, and he slipped into the room behind it.

Miss Debbie Lee’s room this, evidently; evidently, too, left by its tenant in some haste. Drawers had been left half closed, boxes were standing about with unclosed lids; female wearing apparel was thrown, here and there about the bed and the chairs.

And on the dressing-table, over which Brixey carefully shone his lamp, lay an oblong green morocco purse, a thing of some size, half hidden beneath a handkerchief which bad either been carelessly thrown or purposely placed on it.

Brixey set down his lamp at the corner of the dressing-table and opened that purse. And he instantly knew that its owner had gone off in such a hurry that she had forgotten it. For there, in one division, were bank-notes; in another, gold.

In a third was a mere scrap of paper, and it was to that, rather than to the gold and the notes, that Brixey gave his attention.