Silently they reached the well, and French, with his electric torch, examined the wooden cover.
“I think if we lift together we can get it up,” he whispered. “Try at this side and use the ivy as a hinge.”
They raised it easily and French propped it with a billet of wood.
“Now, Sergeant, the fishing line.”
At the sergeant’s cottage they had tied on a bunch of hooks and a weight. French now let these down, having passed the line through one of the holes in the grating to ensure its swinging free from the walls. Gradually he paid out the cord until a faint plop announced that the water had been reached. He continued lowering as long as the cord would run out; then he began jerking it slowly up and down.
“Swing it from side to side, Sergeant, while I keep jerking it. If there’s anything there we should get it.”
For twenty minutes they worked, and then, just as French was coming to the conclusion that a daylight descent into the well would be necessary, the hooks caught. Something of fair weight was on the line.
“Let it stay till it stops swinging, or else we shall lose the hooks in the wall, Mr. French,” the sergeant advised, now as keenly interested as was French himself.
“Right, Sergeant. The water will soon steady it.”
After a few seconds, French began to pull slowly up, the drops from the attached object echoing loudly up the long funnel. And then came into the circle of the sergeant’s torch a man’s coat.
It was black and sodden and shapeless from the water, and slimy to the touch. They lifted it round the well so that the wall should be between them and the house and examined it with their electric torches.
In the breast pocket was a letter case containing papers, but it was impossible to read anything they bore. A pipe, a tobacco pouch, a box of matches, and a handkerchief were in the other pockets.
Fortunately for French, there was a tailor’s tab sewn into the lining of the breast pocket and he was able to make out part of the legend: “R. Shrubsole & Co., Newton Abbot.” Beneath was a smudge which had evidently been the owner’s name, but this was undecipherable.
“We’ll get it from the tailor,” French said. “Let’s try the hooks again.”
Once again they lowered their line, but this time without luck.
“No good,” French declared at last. “We’ll have to pump it out. You might get the depth, and then close up and leave it as we found it. We’d better bring a portable pump, for I don’t suppose that old thing will work.”
They replaced the grating and the billet of wood, and stealing silently out of the yard, rode back to Ashburton.
With the coat wrapped in paper and packed in his suitcase, French took an early bus to Newton Abbot. There he soon found Messrs. Shrubsole’s establishment and asked for the proprietor.
“It’s not easy to say whose it was,” Mr. Shrubsole declared when he had examined the coat. “You see, these labels of ours are printed—that is, our name and address. But the customer’s name is written and it would not last in the same way. I’m afraid I cannot read it.”
“If it had been possible to read it, I should not have come to you, Mr. Shrubsole. I want you to get at it from the cloth and size and probable age and things of that kind. You can surely find out all those things by examination.”
This appeared to be a new idea to Mr. Shrubsole. He admitted that something of the kind might be done, and calling an assistant, fell to scrutinising the garment.
“It’s that brown tweed with the purple line that we sold so much of last year,” the assistant declared. He produced a roll of cloth. “See, if we lift the lining here it shows clear enough.”
“That’s right,” his employer admitted. “Now can we get the measurements?”
“Not so easy,” said the assistant. “The thing will be all warped and shrunk from the water.”
“Try,” French urged, with his pleasant smile.
An orgy of measuring followed, with a subsequent recourse to the books and much low-voiced conversation. Finally Mr. Shrubsole announced the result.
“It’s not possible to say for sure, Mr. French. You see, the coat is shrunk out of all knowing. But we think it might belong to one of four men.”
“I see your difficulty, Mr. Shrubsole, but if you tell me the four it may help me.”
“I hope so. We sold suits of about this size to Mr. Albert Cunningham of Twenty-seven, Acacia Street, Newton Abbot; Mr. John Booth of Lyndhurst, Teignmouth; Mr. Stanley Pyke, of East Street, Ashburton; and Mr. George Hepworth, of Linda Lodge, Newton Abbot. Any of those any good to you?” Mr. Shrubsole’s expression suddenly changed. “By Jove! You’re not the gentleman that’s been making these discoveries about Mr. Berlyn and Mr. Pyke? We’ve heard some report that some Scotland Yard man was down and had found out that that tragedy was not all it was supposed to be. That it, sir?”
“That’s it,” French replied, feeling that it was impossible to keep his business private. “But I don’t want it talked about. Now you see why I should like to be sure whether that was or was not Mr. Pyke’s coat.”
But in spite of the tailor’s manifest interest, he declared that the point could not be established. He was fairly sure that it belonged to one of the four, but more than that he could not say.
But French had no doubt whatever, and, well pleased with his progress, he left the shop and took the first bus back to Ashburton.
XV
Blackmail
“Have you been able to get the pump, Sergeant?” asked French as he
