“Have you anything to go on?” asked Brereton. “Had anybody any motive? Was there any love affair—jealousy, you know—anything of that sort?”
“No, I’m sure there wasn’t,” replied the superintendent. “The whole town and county’s ringing with the news, and I should ha’ heard something by now. And it wasn’t robbery—not that he’d much on him, poor fellow! There’s all he had,” he went on, opening a drawer. “You can look at ’em, if you like.”
He left the room just then, and Brereton, disregarding the cheap watch and chain and the pigskin purse with its light load, opened Stoner’s pocketbook. There was not much in that, either—a letter or two, some receipted bills, a couple of much creased copies of the reward bill, some cuttings from newspapers. He turned from these to the pocketbook itself, and on the last written page he found an entry which made him start. For there again were the initials!
“—M. & C.—fraud—bldg. soc.—Wilchester Assizes—81—£2,000—money never recovered—2 yrs.—K. pres.”
Not much—but Brereton hastily copied that entry. And he had just written the last word when the superintendent came back into the room with a man who was in railway uniform.
“Come in here,” the superintendent was saying. “You can tell me what it is before this gentleman. Some news from High Gill junction, Mr. Brereton,” he went on, “something about Stoner. Well, my lad, what is it?”
“The stationmaster sent me over on his bicycle,” replied the visitor. “We heard over there this afternoon about Stoner’s body being found, and that you were thinking he must have fallen over into the quarry in the darkness. And we know over yonder that that’s not likely.”
“Aye?” said the superintendent. “Well, as a matter of fact, my lad, we weren’t thinking that, but no doubt that rumour’s got out. Now why do you railway folks know it isn’t likely?”
“That’s what I’ve come to tell,” answered the man, a sharp, intelligent-looking fellow. “I’m ticket-collector over there, as you know, sir. Now, young Stoner came to the junction on Saturday afternoon and booked for Darlington, and of course went to Darlington. He came back yesterday afternoon—Sunday—by the train that gets to our junction at 3:30. I took his ticket. Instead of going out of the station by the ordinary way, he got over the fence on the down line side, saying to me that he’d take a straight cut across the moor to Highmarket. I saw him going Highmarket way for some distance. And he’d be at Hobwick Quarry by 4:30 at the latest—long before darkness.”
“Just about sunset, as a matter of fact,” remarked the superintendent. “The sun sets about 4:18.”
“So he couldn’t have fallen over in the darkness,” continued the ticket-collector. “If all had gone well with him, he’d have been down in Highmarket here by dusk.”
“I’m obliged to you,” said the superintendent. “It’s worth knowing, of course. Came from Darlington, eh? Was he alone?”
“Quite alone, sir.”
“You didn’t see anybody else going that way across the moors, did you? Didn’t notice anybody following him?”
“No,” replied the ticket-collector with decision. “Me and one of my mates watched him a long way, and I’ll swear there was no one near him till he was out of sight. We didn’t watch him on purpose, neither. When the down-train had gone, me and my mate sat down to smoke our pipes, and from where we were we could see right across the moors in this direction. We saw Stoner—now and then, you understand—right away to Chat Bank.”
“You didn’t notice any suspicious characters come to your station that afternoon or evening?” asked the superintendent.
The ticket-collector replied that nothing of that sort had been seen, and he presently went away. And Brereton, after an unimportant word or two, went away too, certain by that time that the death of Stoner had some sinister connection with the murder of Kitely.
XVIII
The Scrap Book
Brereton went back to his friend’s house more puzzled than ever by the similarity of the entries in Kitely’s memoranda and in Stoner’s pocketbook. Bent had gone over to Norcaster that afternoon, on business, and was not to be home until late in the evening: Brereton accordingly dined alone and had ample time to reflect and to think. The reflecting and the thinking largely took the form of speculating—on the fact that certain terms and figures which had been set down by Kitely had also been set down by Stoner. There were the initials—M. & C. There was a date—if it was a date—81. What in Kitely’s memorandum the initials S.B. might mean, it was useless to guess at. His memorandum, indeed, was as cryptic as an Egyptian hieroglyph. But Stoner’s memorandum was fuller, more explicit. The M. & C. of the Kitely entry had been expanded to Mallows and Chidforth. The entry “fraud” and the other entries “Wilchester Assizes” and the supplementary words, clearly implied that two men named Mallows and Chidforth were prosecuted at Wilchester Assizes in the year 1881 for fraud, that a sum of £2,000 was involved, which was never recovered, that Mallows and Chidforth, whoever they were, were convicted and were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. So much for Stoner’s memorandum. But did it refer to the same event to which Kitely made reference in his memorandum? It seemed highly probable that it did. It seemed highly probable, too, that the M. & C. of Kitely’s entry were the Mallows & Chidforth of Stoner’s. And now the problem narrowed to one most serious and crucial point—were the Mallows and Chidforth of these references the Mallalieu and Cotherstone of Highmarket.
Speculating on this possibility, Brereton after his solitary dinner went into Bent’s smoking-room, and throwing himself into a chair before the fire, lighted his pipe and proceeded to think things out. It was abundantly clear to him by that time that Kitely and Stoner had been in possession of a secret: it seemed certain that
