“How far to Riddlesdale, Bunter?”
“About thirteen and three-quarter miles, my lord.”
“And the shot was heard at 10:55. It couldn’t be done on foot. Did Watson explain why he didn’t get back from his round till two in the morning?”
“Yes, my lord. He says he reckons to be back about eleven, but his horse cast a shoe between King’s Fenton and Riddlesdale. He had to walk him quietly into Riddlesdale—about 3½ miles—getting there about ten, and knock up the blacksmith. He turned in to the Lord in Glory till closing time, and then went home with a friend and had a few more. At 12:40 he started off home, and picked Grimethorpe up a mile or so out, near the cross roads.”
“Sounds circumstantial. The blacksmith and the friend ought to be able to substantiate it. But we simply must find those men at the Pig and Whistle.”
“Yes, my lord. I will try again after lunch.”
It was a good lunch. But that seemed to exhaust their luck for the day, for by three o’clock the men had not been identified, and the scent seemed cold.
Wilkes, the groom, however, had his own contribution to the inquiry. He had met a man from King’s Fenton at lunch, and they had, naturally, got to talking over the mysterious murder at the Lodge, and the man had said that he knew an old man living in a hut on the Fell, who said that on the night of the murder he’d seen a man walking over Whemmeling Fell in the middle of the night. “And it coom to me, all of a sooden, it mought be his grace,” said Wilkes brightly.
Further inquiries elicited that the old man’s name was Groot, and that Wilkes could easily drop Lord Peter and Bunter at the beginning of the sheep-path which led up to his hut.
Now, had Lord Peter taken his brother’s advice, and paid more attention to English country sports than to incunabula and criminals in London—or had Bunter been brought up on the moors, rather than in a Kentish village—or had Wilkes (who was a Yorkshire man bred and born, and ought to have known better) not been so outrageously puffed up with the sense of his own importance in suggesting a clue, and with impatience to have that clue followed up without delay—or had any one of the three exercised common sense—this preposterous suggestion would never have been made, much less carried out, on a November day in the North Riding. As it was, however, Lord Peter and Bunter left the trap at the foot of the moor-path at ten minutes to four, and, dismissing Wilkes, climbed steadily up to the wee hut on the edge of the fell.
The old man was extremely deaf, and, after half an hour of interrogation, his story did not amount to much. On a night in October, which he thought might be the night of the murder, he had been sitting by his peat fire when—about midnight, as he guessed—a tall man had loomed up out of the darkness. He spoke like a Southerner, and said he had got lost on the moor. Old Groot had come to his door and pointed out the track down towards Riddlesdale. The stranger had then vanished, leaving a shilling in his hand. He could not describe the stranger’s dress more particularly than that he wore a soft hat and an overcoat, and, he thought, leggings. He was pretty near sure it was the night of the murder, because afterwards he had turned it over in his mind and made out that it might have been one of yon folk at the Lodge—possibly the Duke. He had only arrived at this result by a slow process of thought, and had not “come forward,” not knowing whom or where to come to.
With this the inquirers had to be content, and, presenting Groot with half a crown, they emerged upon the moor at something after five o’clock.
“Bunter,” said Lord Peter through the dusk, “I am abso-bally-lutely positive that the answer to all this business is at Grider’s Hole.”
“Very possibly, my lord.”
Lord Peter extended his finger in a southeasterly direction. “That is Grider’s Hole,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Very good, my lord.”
So, like two Cockney innocents, Lord Peter and Bunter set forth at a brisk pace down the narrow moor-track towards Grider’s Hole, with never a glance behind them for the great white menace rolling silently down through the November dusk from the wide loneliness of Whemmeling Fell.
“Bunter!”
“Here, my lord!”
The voice was close at his ear.
“Thank God! I thought you’d disappeared for good. I say, we ought to have known.”
“Yes, my lord.”
It had come on them from behind, in a single stride, thick, cold, choking—blotting each from the other, though they were only a yard or two apart.
“I’m a fool, Bunter,” said Lord Peter.
“Not at all, my lord.”
“Don’t move; go on speaking.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Peter groped to the right and clutched the other’s sleeve.
“Ah! Now what are we to do?”
“I couldn’t say, my lord, having no experience. Has the—er—phenomenon any habits, my lord?”
“No regular habits, I believe. Sometimes it moves. Other times it stays in one place for days. We can wait all night, and see if it lifts at daybreak.”
“Yes, my lord. It is unhappily somewhat damp.”
“Somewhat—as you say,” agreed his lordship, with a short laugh.
Bunter sneezed, and begged pardon politely.
“If we go on going southeast,” said his lordship, “we shall get to Grider’s Hole all right, and they’ll jolly well have to put us up for the night—or give us an escort. I’ve got my torch in my pocket, and we can go by compass—oh, hell!”
“My lord?”
“I’ve got the wrong stick. This beastly ash! No compass, Bunter—we’re done in.”
“Couldn’t we keep on going downhill, my lord?”
Lord Peter hesitated. Recollections of what he had heard and read surged up in his mind to tell him that uphill or downhill
