“Are you going out?” asked Margaret, finding him waiting under the portico.
“I am buying a few presents for friends in London,” said Mr. Reeder glibly; “a butter dish or two, suitably inscribed, would, I feel sure, be very acceptable.”
The taxi did not take him to Siltbury. Instead, he followed a road which ran parallel with the sea coast, and which eventually landed him in an impossible sandy track, from which the ancient taxi was extricated with some difficulty.
“I told you this led nowhere, sir,” said the aggrieved driver.
“Then we have evidently reached our destination,” replied Mr. Reeder, applying his weight to push the machine to a more solid foundation.
Siltbury was not greatly favoured by London visitors, the driver told him on the way back. The town had a pebbly beach and people preferred sand.
“There are some wonderful beaches about here,” said the driver, “but you can’t reach ’em.”
They had taken the left-hand road, which would bring them eventually to the town, and had been driving for a quarter of an hour when Mr. Reeder, who sat by the driver, pointed to a large scar in the face of the downs on his right.
“Siltbury Quarries,” explained the cabman. “They’re not worked now; there are too many holes.”
“Holes?”
“The downs are like a sponge,” said the man. “You could lose yourself in the caves. Old Mr. Kimpon used to work the quarries many years ago, and it broke him. There’s a big cave there you can drive a coach and four into! About twenty years ago, three fellows went in to explore the caves and never came out again.”
“Who owns the quarry now?”
Mr. Reeder wasn’t very interested, but when his mind was occupied with a pressing problem he had a trick of flogging along a conversation with appropriate questions, and if he was oblivious of the answers they produced, the sound of the human voice had a sedative effect.
“Mr. Daver owns it now. He bought it after the people were lost in the caves, and had the entrance boarded up. You’ll see it in a minute.”
They were climbing a gentle slope. As they came to the crest, he pointed down a tidy-looking roadway to where, about two hundred yards distant, Reeder saw an oblong gap in the white face of the quarry. Across this, and falling the cavity except for an irregular space at the top, was a heavy wooden gate.
“You can’t see it from here,” said the driver, “but the top hole is blocked with barbed wire.”
“Is that a gate or a hoarding he has fixed across?”
“A gate, sir. Mr. Daver owns all the land from here to the sea. He used to farm about a hundred acres of the downs, but it’s very poor land. In those days he kept his wagons inside the cave.”
“When did he give up farming?” asked Mr. Reeder, interested.
“About six years ago,” was the reply, and it was exactly the reply Mr. Reeder had expected. “I used to see a lot of Mr. Daver before then,” said the driver. “In the old times I had a horse cab, and I was always driving him about. He used to work like a slave—on the farm in the morning, down in the town buying things in the afternoon. He was more like a servant than a master. He used to meet all the trains when visitors arrived—and they had a lot of visitors in those days, more than they have now. Sometimes he went up to London to bring them down. He always went to meet Miss Crewe when the young lady was at school.”
“Do you know Miss Crewe?”
Apparently the driver had seen her frequently, but his acquaintance was very limited.
Reeder got down from the cab and climbed the barred gate on to the private roadway. The soil was chalky and the road had the appearance of having been recently overhauled. He mentioned this fact to the cabman and learned that Mr. Daver kept two old men constantly at work making up the road, though why he should do so he had no idea.
“Where would you like to go now, sir?”
“To a quiet place where I can telephone,” said Mr. Reeder.
These were the facts that he carried with him, and vital facts they were. During the past six years, the life of Mr. Daver had undergone a considerable change. From being a harassed man of affairs, “more like a servant than a master,” he had become a gentleman of leisure. The mystery of the Keep was a mystery no longer. He got Inspector Simpson on the telephone and conveyed to him the gist of his discovery.
“By the way,” said Simpson at the finish, “the gold hasn’t been sent to Australia yet. There has been trouble at the docks. You don’t seriously anticipate a Flack ‘operation,’ do you?”
Mr. Reeder, who had forgotten all about the gold convoy, made a cautious and noncommittal reply.
By the time he returned to Larmes Keep, the other guests had returned. The hall porter said they were expecting a “party” on the morrow, but as he had volunteered that information on the previous evening Mr. Reeder did not take it very seriously. He gathered that the man spoke in good faith, without any wish to deceive, but he saw no signs of unusual activity; nor, indeed, was there accommodation at the Keep for more than a few more visitors.
He looked around for the aggrieved servant and missed her. A discreet inquiry revealed the fact that she had left that afternoon.
Mr. Reeder went to his room, locked the door, and busied himself in the examination of two great scrapbooks which he had brought down with him. They were the official records of Flack and his gang. Perhaps “gang” was hardly a proper description, for he seemed to use and change his associates as a theatrical manager uses and changes his cast. The police knew close on a score of men who from time to time had assisted John Flack in his nefarious
