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"How far did you walk?" "As far as Waterloo Bridge." "Always on the Temple side?" "Just so, sir straight along on that side." "Very good. When you got close to Waterloo Bridge, did you meet anybody you knew?" "Yes." "Mr. Aylmore, the Member of Parliament." Spargo could not avoid a glance at the two sisters. The elder's head was averted; the younger was staring at the witness steadily.
It seems a strange, strange thing to interfere with a dead man's last resting-place a dreadful thing." "If there is a dead man there," said Spargo. He himself was mainly curious about the details of this exhumation; he had no scruples, sentimental or otherwise, about the breaking in upon the dead. He watched all that was done.
Have you any relations in England?" "None that we know of," replied Evelyn. "Nobody you could go to for information about the past?" asked Spargo. "No nobody!" Spargo drummed his fingers on his blotting-pad. He was thinking hard. "How old is your father?" he asked suddenly. "He was fifty-nine a few weeks ago," answered Evelyn. "And how old are you, and how old is your sister?" demanded Spargo.
Aylmore, having been sworn, and asked a question or two by the Coroner, requested permission to tell, in his own way, what he knew of the dead man and of this sad affair; and having received that permission, he went on in a calm, unimpassioned manner to repeat precisely what he had told Spargo. It sounded a very plain, ordinary story. He had known Marbury many years ago.
And Spargo noiselessly followed his directions and slightly parting the branches which concealed him looked in through the uncurtained glass. The interior into which he looked was rough and comfortless in the extreme. There were the bare accessories of a moorland cottage; rough chairs and tables, plastered walls, a fishing rod or two piled in a corner; some food set out on a side table.
Some mistake arose when Maitland was released, he got clear away. Nobody's ever heard a word of him from that day to this. Unless Miss Baylis has." "Where does this Miss Baylis live?" asked Spargo. "Well, I don't know," replied Mr. Quarterpage. "She did live in Brighton when she took the child away, and her address was known, and I have it somewhere.
But what are you doing here, Spargo?" Spargo leant against the head of the stairs and folded his hands. "I came here," he said, "to keep an appointment with Mr. Elphick an appointment which he made when I called on him, as you suggested, at nine o'clock. The appointment a most important one was for eleven o'clock." Breton glanced at his watch. "Come on, then," he said.
Already he felt a strange curiosity about Breton, and about the young ladies whom he heard talking behind the inner door. "Well, come on," said Breton. "Let's go straight there." The mortuary to which Rathbury led the way was cold, drab, repellent to the general gay sense of the summer morning. Spargo shivered involuntarily as he entered it and took a first glance around.
Coming down to Fleet Street that morning, Spargo, strolling jauntily along the front of the Law Courts, encountered a fellow-journalist, a man on an opposition newspaper, who grinned at him in a fashion which indicated derision. "Left behind a bit, that rag of yours, this morning, Spargo, my boy!" he remarked elegantly.
Spargo looked up at the inspector with a quick jerk of his head. "I know this man," he said. The inspector showed new interest. "What, Mr. Breton?" he asked. "Yes. I'm on the Watchman, you know, sub-editor. I took an article from him the other day article on 'Ideal Sites for Campers-Out. He came to the office about it. So this was in the dead man's pocket?"
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