The Chief Constable looked at Blick when Chilford walked out: his eyes assumed a somewhat blank and doubtful expression. “What on earth does he mean by all that?” he exclaimed.
“That something to do with money is at the bottom of it,” said Blick. “And after all, there’s the three thousand pounds’ worth of bank-notes to account for! There doesn’t seem any doubt that Guy Markenmore had these notes on him when he left the Sceptre, and he certainly hadn’t them when we examined his clothing. Where are they? Obviously, the murderer helped himself to them.”
The Chief Constable reflected awhile.
“The queer thing, to my way of thinking,” he observed at last, “is this: if the murder was committed for the sake of robbery, how comes it that the murderer didn’t possess himself of all the rest of the stuff Guy Markenmore had on him? Money, a fair lot, I think; valuables, gold watch and chain; and so on. There was a very valuable diamond ring, wasn’t there?”
“The odd thing is that another ring—the duplicate of that which Mrs. Tretheroe wears—was gone,” said Blick. “Gone!—a comparatively valueless thing, merely a curiosity, while a diamond ring, worth a great deal, was left on the very same finger! But what’s the use of theorizing? The facts are as they are! If there’s nothing whatever in what we’ll call the Mrs. Braxfield line—well, I’m still without any real clue!”
“Chilford says—money!—money!—money!” remarked the Chief Constable. “I wish we knew more of Guy Markenmore’s money affairs! But talking of money, I shouldn’t wonder if that dodge of Mother Braxfield’s mayn’t have something in it. I know village people pretty well by now! What she said is quite true—there’s scarce a soul amongst ’em that wouldn’t sell his own mother for a five-pound note! Bit exaggerated, of course, that!—but it’s sound in principle.”
Blick looked doubtful and surprised.
“Do you mean to say that, supposing there are people in Markenmore who really do know something about this affair, they’ve kept silence up to now?” he asked. “I don’t mean people who might be incriminated by confession or revelation, but people who are in possession of information and simply won’t give it?”
“Nothing more likely!” affirmed the Chief Constable, with the emphatic assurance of experience. “Village folk are the biggest gossips and scandalmongers under the sun! There isn’t a village in England that isn’t a perfect hot-bed of slander—born of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness! But—don’t you make any mistake, my lad!—village folk, in spite of that tendency, can be as close as ever they make ’em! You might as well try to get butter out of a dog’s mouth as try to extract a secret from them if they don’t want to tell it. Why, I would give you piles of proof of that out of my own experience! I remember one case that happened near here, not so long ago. A certain land-agent was shot at and badly wounded one night as he went home, and we’ve never yet found out who his assailant and would-be murderer was. But I haven’t the slightest doubt that nearly every man and woman in that place knows who he was—only they won’t say, because their chief regret is that the victim wasn’t finished off. There you are!”
“But according to Mrs. Braxfield—and you seem to agree with her—these folks would tell for a five-pound note,” said Blick with a cynical laugh. “Why didn’t you try that in the case you mention?”
“We may do yet,” replied the Chief Constable. “The victim himself seems inclined to hush the matter up, fearing worse things—but we may try a reward. In this Markenmore affair, however, Mrs. Braxfield is going to try a monetary offer—out of pure pique, I fancy!—and it won’t surprise me if something results. If I were you, Blick, I should keep my ears on the stretch during the next twenty-four hours. I don’t know what she’ll offer, but if it’s something substantial, there’ll be a vast amount of cupidity aroused amongst these rustics—I know ’em!”
Blick got up from the elbow-chair in which, since Chilford’s abrupt departure, he had been sitting with his legs stretched out and his hands in his pockets, looking perplexed and somewhat disconsolate.
“I may as well be going back then,” he muttered. “Hanged if I know even now, if we didn’t part with Mrs. Braxfield a bit too easily!”
“She’ll not run away,” retorted the Chief Constable, with a significant nod of his head. “And if it’s all a piece of bluff——”
He paused as a policeman entered the room and laid a card before him.
“The gentleman’s waiting outside, sir,” said the policeman.
The Chief Constable glanced at the card, started, and turned to Blick.
“Sir Thomas Hodges-Wilkins!” he murmured surprisedly. “That big scientific chap!—Professor, from Cambridge, that that fellow Spindler told us about. What on earth can he want? Bring him in, Jarvis,” he went on. “Set a chair there.” He looked wonderingly at the detective. “Another development!” he muttered. “What now?”
Blick made no reply. He was watching the door, through which suddenly appeared a man who was not at all the sort of person that Blick expected to see. Instead of being old, and grave, and bald, and bearded, and spectacled, and dressed anyhow, the famous professor of chemistry was a smart, alert, rather military-looking man, fastidiously attired, wearing a monocle instead of spectacles, and endowed with a breezy air and cheery smile, which he bestowed freely on the two occupants of the room as he marched in and seated himself by the Chief Constable’s desk, on the edge of which he laid down two or three newspapers, heavily marked here and there with blue pencil.
“Good morning—good morning!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know whether you’ll guess my business from my name—or, indeed, if you know anything about it? But I’ve been reading the newspaper accounts of this Markenmore affair, and it seemed to me, last night, that it was my duty to come here and tell you something. And first of all, to make things clear, have you had here a young man named Spindler, a chemist’s assistant, from Farsham?”
“We have!” replied the Chief Constable.
“Did he tell you anything in which my name came up? And if so, what?”
“He told us—this is Detective-Sergeant Blick, who was with me when this man Spindler called—that a certain secret of his, respecting the preparation of some dye which he had offered to sell to Guy Markenmore, was submitted to you by Markenmore, for your expert opinion.”
“Just so! It was. Markenmore got my opinion. Now—how much further had that gone?”
“Gone to this,” answered the Chief Constable. “When Markenmore was murdered he had on him three thousand pounds in bank-notes, which, we believe, he was to hand over to Spindler that very morning in payment for his secret.”
“Spindler was going to sell for three thousand pounds?”
“He was—so he told us.”
The Professor of Chemistry screwed his monocle still further into the cavity of his eye, and took a queer, keenly-inspecting glance at the two men.
“Do you two believe—are you theorizing that Markenmore was murdered for the three thousand pounds?” he asked quizzically. “It, to be sure, looks rather obvious!”
“There is such a theory afloat,” answered the Chief Constable. “He had that sum on him at three o’clock on Tuesday morning, and it was gone when his dead body was found a very few hours later!”
“Aye!” said the Professor with a short laugh. “And something else gone with it, too! Now, look here!—I’m not a policeman, but I have some intelligence. I’ll tell you what Guy Markenmore was murdered for, and I’ll lay all the money I’ve got to a China orange that I’m right, all the time. Guy Markenmore was murdered for the Spindler formula! Dead certain!”
The Professor laughed again, and slapped his elegantly-gloved hand on the desk at his side. The two listeners stared at him, and then at each other. And this time it was Blick who spoke.
“Are we to understand, Sir Thomas,” he asked, “that that formula was of great value?—of greater value than the three thousand pounds?”
“Call me Professor,” said the famous scientist. “Saves time—— Yes. You are to understand that! Three thousand pounds! Had it been my secret, I wouldn’t have sold it for thirty thousand pounds! That chap Spindler is an ass—or awfully ignorant of market values; had he stuck to it himself he’d have made a huge fortune out of it, one way and another. I don’t know if you two are at all up in this question of aniline dyes? You’ll know, at any rate, if you read your newspapers, that it’s a most serious question—one of rescuing a trade originally ours from its German usurpers. You know that? Very well, this young man at Farsham—clever chap, indeed!—has discovered a peculiar formula! I needn’t go into details, but I know enough to be absolutely certain, in my own mind, that Markenmore was murdered by somebody who knew that he had the formula on him, and who meant to have it for himself by hook or crook. He was probably followed down here, watched, and attacked at the lonely spot I read of in the papers.”
“That presupposes that somebody in London knew what he had on him,” said Blick.
“Somebody—in London or elsewhere—certainly must have known,” assented the Professor. “My own theory is that Markenmore told other people—financial speculators, perhaps, about this—and he may have shown them my opinion as an expert. But I’ll tell you my own share in the transaction. I have, as you may know, a European reputation as a chemist. Well, Markenmore wrote to me, enclosing Spindl............