However, none of these considerations affected his course of action. He had his orders and he must carry them out. He completed the filing of the papers in the Kensington murder case, handed over one or two other matters to his immediate subordinate, and taking the large despatch case of apparatus without which he never travelled, went home to inform his wife of his change of plans and pack a suitcase with his modest personal requirements. Then he drove to St. Pancras and caught the restaurant car express to the north.
He was neither an artist nor an angler, and in any case he considered the month of was scarcely a propitious time for worthies of either type to be abroad. Therefore beyond dressing in a more countrified style than he would have affected in town, he attempted no disguise.
He changed at Hellifield and took the branch line which wound up in a northeasterly direction into the bleak hills and moors of western Yorkshire. had just struck when he reached the diminutive terminus of Thirsby.
A porter bearing the legend “Thirsdale Arms” on his cap was at the station, and having surrendered his baggage, French followed the man on foot down the main street of the little town to a low, straggling, old-fashioned building with half-timbered gables and a real old swinging sign. Here a stout and cheery proprietor gave him a somewhat voluble welcome, and soon he was the temporary tenant of a low and dark, but otherwise comfortable bedroom, while an appetising odour of frying ham indicated that the pièce de résistance of his supper was in full preparation.
He smoked a contemplative pipe in the bar, then about took his hat, and passing the landlord at the door, gave him a cheerful good night and said he was going for a walk before bed.
While he did not intend to hide the fact of his visit to Sergeant Kent, he had no wish to draw attention thereto. He believed that in a small town such things invariably get out, and to shroud them in an air of mystery was only to invite publicity. He therefore did not ask for a direction, but instead strolled through the streets until he saw the police station. Walking quietly but openly to the door, he knocked. Two minutes later he was shaking hands with the sergeant in the latter’s room.
“I’m sure I’m grateful to you for giving me the chance of a change from London,” French began in his pleasant, cheery way as he took the chair the other pulled forward to the fire. “Will you join me in a cigar, or do you object to smoking in the office?”
The sergeant dourly helped himself from French’s case, and gruffly admitted he was not above the use of tobacco after office hours. French seemed in no hurry to come to business, but chatted on about his journey and his impressions of the country, drawing the other out and deferring to his views in a way that was nothing less than flattering. Before ten minutes Kent had forgotten that his visitor was an interloper sent to him over his head because his superiors imagined that he was not good enough for his own job, and was thinking that this stranger, for a Londoner and a Yard man, was not as bad as he might reasonably have been expected to be. Under the soothing influences of flattery and good tobacco, he gradually mellowed until, when French at last decided the time had come, he was quite willing to assist in any way in his power.
At French’s request he gave him a detailed account of the tragedy together with a copy of the depositions taken at the inquest, and then went on to describe the bomb which Mr. Tarkington had dropped when he mentioned his theories to Major Valentine.
“Chief Constable, he told me to find out what kind of safe it was in the house,” the sergeant went on. “I knew, for I had seen it at the time, but I went out again to make sure. It was made by Carter & Stephenson of Leeds, number—” he referred to a well-thumbed notebook—“12,473. I went down to Leeds, and saw the makers, and they said the safe was twenty years old, but it was the best fireproof safe of its day. I asked them would the notes have burned up in it, and they said they wouldn’t scarcely be browned, not no matter how fierce the fire might be.”
“And what exactly was in the safe?”
“Just paper ashes and sovereigns. No whole papers—all was burned to ashes.”
“Could I see those ashes? Are any of them left?”
“I think so. We took out the sovereigns and left the rest. The safe is lying in the rubbish where we found it.”
French nodded, and for some minutes sat silent, drawing slowly at his cigar while he turned over in his mind the details he had learned. As he did so the words of Chief Inspector Mitchell recurred to him: “The people down there don’t appear to know much about it, and the whole thing may turn out to be a mare’s nest.” Now, having heard the story, he wondered if this was not going to be another of his chief’s amazing intuitions. It certainly looked as like a mare’s nest as anything he had ever handled. The only shred of evidence for foul play was the safe-builders’ statement that their safe would protect papers even in the fiercest fire, and that statement left him cold. What else could the builders say? They had sold the thing as fireproof; how could they now admit they had made a false claim? And this Tarkington’s theory of the twenty-pound note was even less convincing. There was no real reason to
