That evening, with a suitcase and a bag of golf clubs, he descended on the medieval town of Rye. A golfer or an artist would find himself entirely without question at the ancient Cinque Port Town. For his own purposes Harry Labar was a naturalist as well as a golfer, and he proposed to examine the flora and fauna of the marshes with some precision ere he returned to town.
He did not go to one of the old hostelries where visitors might have become curious and friendly. He took humble lodgings at the house of a retired Metropolitan police constable who might be relied upon to keep his mouth shut in any circumstances. Also it is regrettable to record that Labar’s first night in town was spent in the cheaper kind of four ale bars in the society of local shop assistants, shepherds, and watermen. They found the gentleman from London, whose name it was disclosed was James May, an hospitable and genial person with a thirst for information about the districts that lie northeast of Rye which was not easily assuaged.
It was six o’clock the next morning when an unshaven man clad in a rough old suit of Harris tweeds, who might have been a tramp or a naturalist set out through the old town gate in the general direction of Folkestone. A burly man in a decrepit Ford car passed him just outside the Ypres Tower. It was Malone also setting out on the search for a needle in a haystack. No sign of recognition passed between the two men. Labar trudged on and in the course of the next hour was overtaken by an early charabanc on its way to Folkestone. He stopped it and bought a lift for half a dozen miles or so.
He had no fixed plan. If anything came of this excursion luck would have to be with him. Away on his right he could see mile after mile of flat country cut into patterns by a complicated series of dykes, and save for a rare farmhouse or cottage almost void of any indication of human inhabitants.
At a point which he had marked on a small pocket map he descended. He was some few miles from Lydd, but across the wide stretches of marsh and cornland there was only one low and inconspicuous building which a weather-beaten sign announced as an inn, “Licensed to sell by retail wines, spirits, beer and tobacco.” How it might find sufficient customers to support it in that forsaken region Labar did not stop to inquire. He had already had breakfast, but that was two hours agone and an able-bodied detective can always support two breakfasts in the course of his duty. Anyway it was too early in the day for any other pretext to serve.
An old, old man pottering about the garden was very dubious. The inn did not lay itself out much for early meals. However if mister could put up with tea and eggs he would consult his wife as to what might be done.
Tea and eggs it appeared were the very things for which the wayfarer had an inordinate craving. He was afforded a seat in the one bare public room that the inn boasted, while an old lady with crinkled cheeks began to fussily spread a somewhat stained cloth, and to issue instructions to the old man who was boiling the eggs in the adjoining room.
“A lonely neighbourhood this,” observed the inspector idly.
“There be worse,” said the woman. “Mind ye, John, to keep an eye on the clock. Them eggs should be on not a mite longer than two and a half minutes. Yes, there be more lonely places than this. Out there on the marsh”—she jerked a thumb backwards over her shoulder—“there be places where you won’t see a human soul week in and week out. Here we get plenty of company, what with the lookers and the traffic on the road. We’ve lived here nigh on forty years and we ain’t got no complaint. Leastways its bad for the rheumatics sometimes, and my old man there he has a touch of ague.”
She bustled out with the remark that she couldn’t trust that durned old fool to look at the clock, and continued the conversation through the open door.
“Reckon you’ll be making for Folkestone. ’Tis a tidy walk.”
“No. I’m staying at Rye. I’ve come out to have a walk over the marshes.”
She loomed out a bulky figure framed in the doorway. “Then you baint lookin’ for work? You be a visitor? A gentleman?”
“I’m what they call a naturalist. I want to have a look at the plants and birds and things round about. I thought of walking across towards Dungeness.”
She cocked her hands on her hips. “I know what a naturalist is,” she said nodding wisely. “You pick slimy things out of the dicks and keep ’em in little bottles. We’ve had gentlemen out here before like that. Lor-a-mussy, John, them eggs will be as hard as bricks.”
In a panic she flung back into the kitchen, and presently she set his meal before him.
“You baint thinkin’ of trying to walk straight across, be you?” she asked. “You’ll be in a turble tangle if you do. Like as not, you’ll lose yourself. Looks clear enough, but, when you get out in it, you’ll find dicks and sluices and whatnot, all ravelling you up like. Then as you get out near the Ness you’ll find the walking not too good.”
Labar swallowed a mouthful of hard-boiled egg. “I can find a road, I suppose.”
She shook her head. “They baint what you might call proper roads. Rough tracks most of ’em.”
“Not good enough for a motor car, eh?”
She considered doubtfully. “I’ve knowd cars use some of ’em. But they do tell me as they shake the innards all
