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To Spargo, who had never seen anything of the sort before, and who, twenty-four hours previously, would have believed the thing impossible, the proceedings of that evening in the bar-parlour of the "Yellow Dragon" at Market Milcaster were like a sudden transference to the eighteenth century.
The first result was that all three drove to the offices of the legal gentleman who catered for the Watchman when it wanted any law, and that things were put in shape for an immediate application to the Home Office for permission to open the Chamberlayne grave at Market Milcaster; the second was that on the following morning there appeared in the Watchman a notice which set half the mouths of London a-watering.
"Didn't Aylmore say that the real culprit at Cloudhampton was another man his clerk or something of that sort?" "He did," agreed Breton. "He insists on it." "Then this fellow Chamberlayne must have been the man," said Spargo. "He came to Market Milcaster from the north. What'll be done with those papers?" he asked, turning to the officials.
"Then, if you do go down," suggested Crowfoot, "go to the old 'Yellow Dragon' in the High Street, a fine old place. Quarterpage's place of business and his private house were exactly opposite the 'Dragon. But I'm afraid you'll find him dead it's five and twenty years since I was in Market Milcaster, and he was an old bird then. Let's see, now.
Unfortunately for him, and, he believed, for some others in Market Milcaster, there came to the town three years before the present proceedings, a man named Chamberlayne, who commenced business in the High Street as a stock-and-share broker. A man of good address and the most plausible manners, Chamberlayne attracted a good many people amongst them his unfortunate client.
That's who Marbury was Maitland. Dead certain!" Rathbury still stared at his caller. "Go on!" he said. "Tell all about it, Spargo. Let's hear every detail. I'll tell you all I know after. But what I know's nothing to that." Spargo told him the whole story of his adventures at Market Milcaster, and the detective listened with rapt attention. "Yes," he said at the end.
"John Maitland, once of Market Milcaster," replied Spargo. "Ex-bank manager. Also ex-convict." "Ex-convict!" "Ex-convict. He was sentenced, at Market Milcaster Quarter Sessions, in autumn, 1891, to ten years' penal servitude, for embezzling the bank's money, to the tune of over two hundred thousand pounds. Served his term at Dartmoor. Went to Australia as soon, or soon after, he came out.
"Ah!" said Spargo. "What you are suffering from is dulness. You must have an antidote." "Dulness!" exclaimed the damsel. "That's the right word for Market Milcaster. There's just a few regular old customers drop in here of a morning, between eleven and one. A stray caller looks in perhaps during the afternoon.
"Where's Market Milcaster?" enquired Spargo. "Don't know it." "Market Milcaster," replied Crowfoot, still turning the silver ticket over and over, "is what the topographers call a decayed town in Elmshire. It has steadily decayed since the river that led to it got gradually silted up. There used to be a famous race-meeting there in June every year.
That's what's said by some people in Market Milcaster." Miss Baylis's stern lips curled. "People in Market Milcaster!" she exclaimed. "All the people I ever knew in Market Milcaster had about as many brains between them as that cat on the wall there.
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