Mrs. Brown, under protest, and with a little grumble at the ridiculousness of “people who couldn’t look other people in the face,” set off in pursuit of Maria.
It was getting dim inside the summerhouse now. There was, however, sufficient light to enable Loveday to discover a small packet of books lying in a corner of the bench on which she sat.
One by one she took them in her hand and closely scrutinized them. The first was a much read and pencil-marked Bible; the others were respectively, a “congregational hymnbook,” a book in a paper cover, on which was printed a flaming picture of a red and yellow angel, pouring blood and fire from out a big black bottle, and entitled The End of the Age, and a smaller book, also in a paper cover, on which was depicted a huge black horse, snorting fire and brimstone into ochre-coloured clouds. This book was entitled The Year Book of the Saints, and was simply a ruled diary with sensational mottoes for every day in the year. In parts, this diary was filled in with large and very untidy handwriting.
In these books seemed to lie the explanation of Maria Lisle’s love of evening solitude and the lonely old summerhouse.
Mrs. Brown pursued Maria to the servants’ entrance to the house, but could not overtake her, the girl making good her retreat there.
She returned to Loveday a little hot, a little breathless and a little out of temper. It was all so absurd, she said; why couldn’t the woman have stayed and had a chat with them? It wasn’t as if she would get any harm out of the talk; she knew as well as everyone else in the village that she (Mrs. Brown) was no idle gossip, tittle-tattling over other people’s affairs.
But here Loveday, a little sharply, cut short her meanderings.
“Mrs. Brown,” she said, and to Mrs. Brown’s fancy her voice and manner had entirely changed from that of the pleasant, chatty lady of half-an-hour ago, “I’m sorry to say it will be impossible for me to stay even one night in your pleasant home, I have just recollected some important business that I must transact in Brighton tonight. I haven’t unpacked my portmanteau, so if you’ll kindly have it taken to your garden-gate, I’ll call for it as we drive past—I am going now, at once, to the inn, to see if Mr. Clampe can drive me back into Brighton tonight.”
Mrs. Brown had no words ready wherewith to express her astonishment, and Loveday assuredly gave her no time to hunt for them. Ten minutes later saw her rousing Mr. Clampe from a comfortable supper, to which he had just settled himself, with the surprising announcement that she must get back to Brighton with as little delay as possible; now, would he be good enough to drive her there?
“We’ll have a pair if they are to be had,” she added. “The road is good; it will be moonlight in a quarter of an hour; we ought to do it in less than half the time we took coming.”
While a phaeton and pair were being got ready, Loveday had time for a few words of explanation.
Maria Lisle’s diary in the old summerhouse had given her the last of the links in her chain of evidence that was to bring the theft of the cheque home to the criminal.
“It will be best to drive straight to the police station,” she said; “they must take out three warrants, one for Maria Lisle, and two others respectively for Richard Steele, late Wesleyan minister of a chapel in Gordon Street, Brighton, and John Rogers, formerly elder of the same chapel. And let me tell you,” she added with a little smile, “that these three worthies would most likely have been left at large to carry on their depredations for some little time to come if it had not been for that ridiculous ghost in Fountain Lane.”
More than this there was not time to add, and when, a few minutes later, the two were rattling along the road to Brighton, the presence of the man, whom they were forced to take with them in order to bring back the horses to East Downes, prevented any but the most jerky and fragmentary of additions to this brief explanation.
“I very much fear that John Rogers has bolted,” once Loveday whispered under her breath.
And again, a little later, when a smooth bit of road admitted of low-voiced talk, she said:
“We can’t wait for the warrant for Steele; they must follow us with it to 15, Draycott Street.”
“But I want to know about the ghost,” said Mr. Clampe; “I am deeply interested in that ‘ridiculous ghost.’ ”
“Wait till we get to 15, Draycott Street,” was Loveday’s reply; “when you’ve been there, I feel sure you will understand everything.”
Church clocks were chiming a quarter to nine as they drove through Kemp Town at a pace that made the passersby imagine they must be bound on an errand of life and death.
Loveday did not alight at the police station, and five minutes’ talk with the inspector in charge there was all that Mr. Clampe required to put things en train for the arrest of the three criminals.
It had evidently been an “excursionists’ day” at Brighton. The streets leading to the railway station were thronged, and their progress along the bye streets was impeded by the overflow of traffic from the main road.
“We shall get along better on foot; Draycott Street is only a stone’s throw from here,” said Loveday; “there’s a turning on the north side of Western Road that will bring us straight into it.”
So they dismissed their trap, and Loveday, acting as cicerone still, led the way through narrow turnings into the district, half town,
