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"My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey." Holmes nodded his head. "The name is familiar to me," said he.
No fencing, said this inward monitor, no circumlocution get to it, straight out. And Stoner thrust his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a copy of the reward bill. He opened it before his employer, watching Mallalieu's face. "That!" he said. "Just that, Mr. Mallalieu." Mallalieu glanced at the handbill, started a little, and looked half-sharply, half-angrily, at his clerk.
And at its end Mallalieu laughed again, still affecting sneering and incredulous sentiments. "Aye? and why did one or t'other or both have it which way you will murder this here old gentleman?" he demanded. "Why, Mr. Sharp-nose?" "I'll tell you and then you'll know what I know," answered Stoner.
"Well," replied the superintendent, reluctantly, "of course I get to hear everything. If you must have it, the prevailing notion is that both you and Mr. Mallalieu had a hand in Kitely's death. They think his murder's at your doors, and that what happened to Stoner was a by-chance.
That there had been a secret, that Stoner had come into possession of it, that Stoner was about to make profit of it, was no proof that he and Cotherstone, or either of them, had murdered Stoner. No if that was all.... But in another moment Mallalieu knew that it was not all. Up to that moment he had firmly believed that he had got away from Hobwick Quarry unobserved. Here he was wrong.
Wilchester was four hundred miles away, far off in the south; ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket had never heard the name of Wilchester. But Stoner had quite apart from the history books, and the geography books, and map of England. Stoner himself was a Darlington man. He had a close friend, a bosom friend, at Darlington, named Myler David Myler.
With every mile they traveled Gray's buoyancy increased and upon his arrival he trod the street to his office like a conqueror. McWade and Stoner, who came in for a conference with minds preoccupied and faces grave, left with a smile and a jest. When they had gone, Gray rose with relief and surprised Buddy by saying: "That's enough for now, thank goodness!
She did not want that to happen. The sudden death of Melville Stoner would bring sweet silence. She wished it possible with a thought to destroy him, to destroy all men. She wanted her mother to draw close to her. That would save her from the men. Surely, before the evening had passed her mother would have something to say, something living and true.
He had seen his friend Myler again that morning; they had had a drink or two together at the station refreshment room before Stoner's train left, and Myler had once more urged upon Stoner to use his fortunately acquired knowledge in the proper way.
And when he returned to the cottage after the inquest on Stoner, his face was unusually long and grave as he prepared to tell Mallalieu the news. "Things are looking in a very bad way for you, Mr. Mallalieu," he whispered, when he was closeted with Mallalieu in the little room which the captive now hated fiercely and loathingly. "They look in a very bad way indeed, sir!
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