tired. We’ve to take William with us. Them’s her orders. He won’t half be sick, poor kid.”
“How’s Burt got on?” I murmured.
“O.K. Also A.1. I like them, Noel. She may be a dreadful woman, though I wouldn’t take the Adjutant’s word for it, but she’s got an awfully kind heart. Did you know uncle has had an awful row with Sir William over the children’s sports? Seems silly, doesn’t it, but they say it was awful. All about nothing, too. You know those boys uncle turned out of the choir? They claimed the right to run in the choirboys’ hundred, because they had put their names down before they were chucked out, and Uncle wouldn’t have it at any price. Unfortunately, they had already run in their heats, while uncle was playing in the cricket match this morning, and both had qualified for the final. The rotten part of it was that Sir William upheld the boys. Uncle was furious, but he kept his temper. Sir William lost his, and called uncle a something parson in front of all the village people, so uncle punched him in the eye and there was the most frightful schemozzle. Uncle stuck to his point, though, and the whole race was abandoned. Sir William has gone off in the most terrible rage, and his eye is swelling up already. Isn’t it a rotten, beastly thing to have happened?”
I agreed, and was about to enter into the thing more deeply when the flap of the tent was pushed aside and young William came butting in.
“Noel! Noel!” he said, “Aunt Caroline’s here and she wants you at once. Uncle hasn’t been home yet, and it’s nearly ten o’clock, and she’s heard about the row he had with Sir William, and she says you know what Sir William’s temper is, and she’s worried to death. I say, she
I did know what the Squire’s temper was. Hadn’t I seen him trying to throttle the financier, Burns, merely for treading on the dog? What would he not do in return for a punch in the eye in front of all the village! I pulled off hat, hair and beard, put on my overcoat, blew out the candles, and, followed by Daphne, I tore out of the tent, and, together with William, we hastened to the vicarage.
Mrs. Coutts was not having hysterics, of course. She was not the type for that. But she did look fearfully white and groggy. I volunteered to go and find Sir William and see what he could tell us of the vicar’s movements after he had left the fete. Daphne volunteered to come too, but, much as I would have liked her company, I thought somebody ought to stay with Mrs. Coutts. I wouldn’t have William, either, because I knew that his aunt would worry all the time he was out. Off I went, alone, therefore, to the Manor House, to see what was what. They were all in bed except Mrs. Bradley. The servants were all at the fete, so she came to the front door and let me in. From the park, through which I had just walked, came the sound of the brass band playing for the dancing. I entered the Manor House and followed Mrs. Bradley to the library, where there was a small but cheerful fire. She invited me to sit down and then she asked whether she had to cross my palm with silver. It says something for my state of mind that I had completely forgotten my gipsy costume. My overcoat had fallen away and disclosed a bright red skirt to her somewhat hawk-like gaze. I frowned and shook my head.
“No. I’ve come with rather serious news,” I said. “The vicar can’t be found. Er—we believe he had some sort of a dust-up with Sir William late in the afternoon, and it struck us, perhaps—”
“That the poor man may be lying at the bottom of the stone quarries with a broken neck,” said the frightful little old woman.
“I’m not joking, you know,” I said stiffly. Her remark seemed to me in poorish taste, of course.
“Neither am I, young man,” she said, poking me in the ribs with a forefinger like the end of an iron bolt. “So come along at once, in case he isn’t dead.”
“But is Sir William at home?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “And in any case I don’t believe he would do the vicar any harm, but we’ll go and see.”
“But not the stone quarries?” I said.
“Why not? I’ve often thought them a perfect gift to a simple-minded murderer who could retain sufficient gumption to push his victim over the edge and then leave the thing alone, and keep his mouth shut and his nerves in working order.”
“Footprints?” I said.
“Grandmothers!” retorted Mrs. Bradley with, I am bound to confess, a certain tartness in her tone which jarred upon me. I mean, I am one of those men who have simple faith in woman being the gentler sex and all that. Anyhow, the next thing I knew was that we were walking through the park, dodging the crowds. We called at Constable Brown’s house and took him and his two lodgers, a couple of second year undergraduates named Miller and Bond who had been spending a few weeks in Saltmarsh to do some quiet reading, along to the vicarage to find out whether the vicar had turned up. He had not, so, shutting our ears to William’s entreaties to be allowed to accompany us, we set out for the quarries. Mrs. Bradley had a powerful torch, Brown had his policeman’s lamp and the two undergraduates carried a bicycle and a car lamp respectively. I walked with Mrs. Bradley, and, as we mounted the uneven track which led uphill to the quarries, an idea occurred to me which I communicated to Brown.
“Mr. Burt,” I said, “who lives just over yonder at the Bungalow, would help in the search, I’m sure. Shall I go and knock him up?”
Brown, who seemed oppressed with a sense of personal responsibility for the vicar’s uncanny disappearance, assented, and we all took the road to the Bungalow. Two rooms were lighted up. I knocked at the door, but nobody came. Queer, of course. I knocked again, and waited, but there was no answer. Apparently Burt and Cora were still at the fete, so we proceeded with our search.
Even by day the stone quarries give me the hump. By night I found them quite alarming. I kept thinking of all the holes that weren’t fenced, and tried to remember the paths where they were. We picked our way carefully along narrow paths made partly by men’s feet and partly by sheep and ponies. We shouted as we went along, and queer echoes came back at us. We travelled in Indian file for a time, until Mrs. Bradley said:
“I think we ought to separate at the next junction of the paths.”
Having no light, I decided to follow her. Miller came with us, and Bond and the constable bore away from us to the left. For two hours, I should think, we called and listened. It was useless to descend the quarries, of course, as well as extremely dangerous. We could check the position of the other party by the lights they were carrying. At last, as though by mutual consent, although nothing had been said, we foregathered and decided to return to the village. I think the constable still wondered what on earth induced us to come to the stone quarries, and I myself was beginning to think ridiculous my idea that the squire had done the vicar some mortal injury as a result of their quarrel.
“He’s probably at home by now, cursing me for keeping him out of bed,” I said to Mrs. Bradley.
