“Mr. Pulteney,” said Leyland, “do you mind going to the stables at the back of the inn to find my man who’s waiting there? Tell him what’s happened, say he’s to get onto the telephone, break into the post-office if necessary, and warn Pullford and Lowgill. He may just have time to head the man off. Oh, by the way, he won’t know who you are, may take you for Brinkman. Say, ‘Here we are again,’ loudly—do you mind?—when you’re outside the stable.”
“It will be a novel experience,” said Mr. Pulteney.
XXII
At a Standstill
It was nearly eleven o’clock before Angela returned; and, since she resolutely refused to disclose anything about her movements unless Bredon divulged his theory, there were no explanations at all that night. “It’s not that I’m inquisitive,” she explained, “but I do want to break you of that bad habit of obstinacy.” “Well, well,” said Bredon, “if you choose to drag my name in the dust, not to mention my car, by these midnight expeditions, there’s no more to be said.” And no more was said.
They found Leyland already at breakfast when they came down. He had been up, he said, since six, making inquiries in every conceivable direction. “I must say,” he added, “it wasn’t Mrs. Bredon’s fault we didn’t catch our man last night.”
“The woman was reckless, I suppose, as usual?” asked Bredon.
“Oo, no,” said Angela in self-defence, “I only got her going a little.”
“It’s eight miles to Lowgill by the signposts,” said Leyland, “and a little more in real life. Mrs. Bredon did it—and, remember, the gradients are far worse than those on the Pullford road—in just over twelve minutes. But we’d no luck. The up-train from Lowgill—it’s the only one of the big expresses that stops there—had just gone before we arrived. And, of course, we couldn’t tell whether Brinkman had gone on it or not. His car passed us on the road, only a few hundred yards from the station, and we hadn’t time to stop.”
“What car was he in?”
“That’s the devilish part of it—I’m sorry, Mrs. Bredon.”
“That’s the damnable part of it,” amended Angela serenely. “It was the car from the garage; and it sailed out at twenty-five minutes to nine, under Mr. Leyland’s nose. Even the sleuthlike brain of Mr. Pulteney didn’t realize what was happening.”
“You see,” explained Leyland, “it was a very well-arranged plant. Brinkman had rung up earlier in the afternoon, asking the garage to meet the late train which gets in to Chilthorpe at 8:40. He gave the name of Merrick. The garage naturally asked no questions as to where the message came from; they’re always meeting that late train. And, of course, they assumed that there was somebody arriving by that train. Then, when the man had got a little way out of the town, just above the gorge there, he was stopped on the road by a passenger with a despatch-box in his hand, who was walking in the direction of Chilthorpe, as if coming from the station. He waved at the car, and asked if it was for Mr. Merrick; then he explained that he was in a great hurry, because he wanted to catch the express at Lowgill. It was a perfectly normal thing to want to do, and there wasn’t much time to do it in; so the man went all out, and just caught the express in time. He didn’t know who we were when we passed him, and it wasn’t till he got back to Chilthorpe that he realized what he’d done. Meanwhile, who’s to say whether Brinkman stopped at Lowgill, or really got into the express?”
“Or took the later train back to Pullford?” suggested Bredon.
“No, we kept a good lookout to see that he didn’t do that. But the other uncertainty remained, and it was fatal to my plans. I sent word to London to have the train watched when it got in, giving a description of Brinkman; but of course that’s never any use. In half an hour or so I shall get a telegram from London to say they’ve found nothing.”
“You couldn’t have the express stopped down the line?”
“I’d have liked to, of course. But it’s a mail train, and it’s always full of rich people in first-class carriages. Give me a local train on a Saturday night, and I’ll have it stopped and searched and all the passengers held up for two hours, and not so much as a letter to the papers about it. But if you stop one of these big expresses on the chance of heading off a criminal, and nothing comes of it, there’ll be questions asked in the House of Commons. And I was in a bad position, you see. I can’t prove that Brinkman was a murderer. Not at present, anyhow. If he’d run off in Mottram’s car, I could have arrested him for car-stealing, but he hadn’t. Why, he even paid Mrs. Davis’s bill!”
“Do you mean to say he asked for his bill yesterday afternoon, and we never heard of it?”
“No, he calculated it out exactly, left a tip of two shillings for the barmaid, and went off leaving the money on his chest of drawers.”
“What about his suitcase?”
“It wasn’t his, it was Mottram’s. He carried off all his own things in the despatch-box. Apart from the fact that he gave a false name to the garage people, his exit was quite en règle. And it’s dangerous to stop a train and arrest a man like that. Added to which, it was perfectly possible that he was lying doggo at Lowgill.”
It was at this point that Mr. Pulteney sailed into the room. The old gentleman was rubbing his hands briskly in the enjoyment of retrospect; he had scarce any need of breakfast, you would have said, so richly was he chewing the cud of his experiences overnight. “What a day I have spent!” he exclaimed. “I have examined a motorcar,
