Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
"Not to my knowledge, Mr. Walford," answered Neale, who knew well that the old innkeeper was hand-in-glove with the Scarnham police, and invariably kept himself well primed with information about their doings. "I should think you know nearly everything just as much as I do more, perhaps." The landlord poked a stout forefinger into Neale's waistcoat. "Aye!" he said.
"Latest about the Scarnham mystery," he said, stopping a lad and taking a couple of papers from him. "Something about the adjourned inquest of course that would be today. Now then what's this?" He drew aside to a quiet corner of the station portico, and with his companion looking over his shoulder, read aloud a passage from the latest of the two papers.
"The ten thousand pounds had been paid to Mr. Frederick Hollis for a special purpose." "But by whom?" asked Starmidge. "That's precisely what I want to know! The knowledge will help me ah! I don't know how much it mayn't help me! For there's no doubt about it, gentlemen, Hollis went down to Scarnham to pay ten thousand pounds to somebody on somebody else's account!
He stated in answer to questions put by the Coroner, that on Monday morning last he had gone with his employer to an out-of-the-way part of Northumberland to buy new stock, and in consequence of his absence from home had not heard of the Scarnham affair until his return this morning, when, on Mr. Marchant's advice, he had at once called on the Coroner's office to volunteer information.
"That's where the mystery comes in. But this and this letter-case and its contents was found on him, and there's no doubt he came down to Scarnham intending to pay that cheque to somebody. You can't throw any light on that, sir?" The visitor, who continued to regard the cheque with evident amazement, at last turned away from it and glanced at his three companions.
I don't know, sir," continued Easleby, laying the blue-pencilled newspaper on the lessee's desk, "if you've read in the papers any account of the affair which is here called the Scarnham Mystery!" Mr. Leopold Castlemayne glanced at the columns to which Easleby pointed, rubbed his chin, and nodded. "Yes yes!" he said. "I have just seen the papers.
"Yes?" he said quietly. "Yes this is Polke, superintendent, Scarnham I rang you up twenty minutes since. I want you to send me, at once, the smartest man you have available. Case is disappearance, under mysterious circumstances, of a bank manager. Securities to a large amount are missing; valuables also. No expense will be spared here money no object. You understand a first-class man? Tonight?
"That's probably what brought Hollis down to Scarnham! A cheque for ten thousand pounds! And incomplete!" The three men bent wonderingly over the bit of pink paper. Neale's quick eyes took in its contents at a glance. LONDON: May 12th, 1912. Pay .............................. or Order the sum of Ten Thousand Pounds £10,000.00. ................... "That's extraordinary!" exclaimed Neale.
But on one point he laid great stress the visit of the little gentleman with the large grey moustache to the Station Hotel at Scarnham on the evening whereon John Horbury disappeared, and to the fragments of conversation overheard by Mrs. Pratt. He described the stranger as Mrs. Pratt had described him, and appealed to him, if he read this news, to come forward at once.
Miss Fosdyke's very anxious indeed about her uncle: she'd give anything or do anything to get news of him. It's all rot, you know, to say he's run away it's my impression he's never gone out of Scarnham or the neighbourhood. But where he is, and whether dead or alive, is beyond my comprehension," he concluded, shaking his head. "If he's alive, why don't we hear something, or find out something?"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking