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Just then the door opened and Gabriel emerged, closing and locking it after him. He paid no attention to the two men, and was passing on towards the outer hall when Polke hailed him. "Mr. Chestermarke," he said, "sorry to trouble you do you know that the housekeeper, Mrs. Carswell, has disappeared? You heard what that girl said this morning? Well, she hasn't come back, and "
Neale," replied the housekeeper. "She wouldn't stay here, though her room was all ready for her. Said she wouldn't stop two seconds in a house that belonged to men who suspected her uncle! So she's gone across there to take rooms. Do do the partners suspect Mr. Horbury of something, Mr. Neale?" Neale shook his head and turned away. "I can't tell you anything, Mrs. Carswell," he answered.
"Is there anything in this house cupboard, chest, trunk, anything in which Mr. Horbury kept valuables?" he asked. "Any place in which he was in the habit of locking up papers, for instance?" Mrs. Carswell again shook her head. No, she knew of no such place or receptacle. There was Mr. Horbury's desk, but she believed all its drawers were open.
Just tell the housekeeper we are coming in, Neale." The Earl nodded to Mrs. Carswell as she received him and the two partners in the adjacent hall. "This lady will remember my calling on Mr. Horbury one evening a few weeks ago," he said. "She saw me with him in that room." "Certainly!" assented Mrs. Carswell, readily enough. "I remember your lordship calling on Mr. Horbury very well.
"Well?" demanded Polke eagerly. "And what is it?" "Young Mitchell, who has a taxi-cab of his own, you know," said Jones. "He told me heard I was inquiring. He says that at half-past ten, just as he was coming out of his shed in River Street, Mrs. Carswell came up and asked him to drive her into Ecclesborough. He did they got there at half-past eleven: he set her down at the Exchange Station.
"What do you mean isn't there!" asked Neale, mounting the steps. "Not in the house?" "Mean just what I say," replied Shirley. "Mrs. Carswell says she hasn't seen him since Saturday. She thinks he's been week-ending. I've been looking out for him coming along from the station. But if he came in by the 8.30, he's a long time getting up here.
Clearly, considering everything, there were grounds for believing that there was some secret between Mrs. Carswell and Joseph Chestermarke. Anyway, rightly or wrongly, Starmidge was suspicious of the junior partner in Chestermarke's Bank, and he wanted to know everything that he could find out about him.
During the night we rescued Henry Weaver, his wife and two children; Captain Carswell, wife and three children, and three servant girls; Patrick Ravel, wife and one child; A.M. Dobbins and two others whose names I have forgotten.
"If either Mr. Chestermarke or Mr. Joseph wish to give you any information, they'll give it themselves. But I can say this on my own responsibility if you know of anything anything, however small! that would account for Mr. Horbury's absence, out with it!" "But I don't I know nothing but what I've told," said Mrs. Carswell. "Literally nothing!" "Nobody knows anything," remarked Neale.
"Smithson," he said to one of them, "you'll stop at the house-door here inside, mind, so as not to attract attention from any customers coming up this hall to the bank. Jones come out here with me a minute," he continued, taking the second man outside. "Look here I've a quiet job for you. You know the housekeeper here Mrs. Carswell? She's disappeared. May be all right and it mayn't.
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