“Any more offers for your house, by the way?” she asked.

  “No. But my publishers say there is a new demand for my books! They are getting out cheap editions of the old ones. That’s on account of this newspaper work. But I’m hanged if I know how I am going to write many more articles, unless I can say something definite. So far they’ve gone down like milk, but I was really commissioned to unravel the murder tangle, not to generalise.”

  When they reached the big garage at Upperton, they got down, and had an interview with the manager. He readily admitted that Mr. Habershon’s car had been left with him. He had since had instructions from the executors of the dead man to offer it for sale.

  “May we see it?” Ned asked.

  “Certainly, sir. It’s a twenty-horse ‘Bellum’ saloon. Come this way.”

  They went into the garage, and inspected the comfortable five-seater in which the tragic three had taken their last drive. Ned walked round to the front, and inspected the lighting-set. There were two big headlights, and the ordinary side lights.

  “Were any of the lights on when the car was found?” he asked.

  The manager considered. “Not when it was found, sir, but they were on. Naturally, if the old gentleman ran after his nephew and niece, he would be in too much of a hurry to turn them off.”

  “ Did he run after his nephew and niece?” asked Nancy.

  “That’s what we think here, madam. All that complicated business about murder, and so on, may do all right for the police. I think they committed suicide, and the old gentleman tried to stop them.”

  “You mean that the lights were turned on, but had gone out?” asked Ned, who had not been listening to the manager’s views about the cause of death.

  “That is what I mean, sir. I should say from what I saw that the lights were turned on, and left on, after the car had stopped. But the engine wasn’t running, and the supply of juice gave out. In fact, I know it did, from my examination.”

  “Thank you,” said Ned. “That is exactly what I wanted to know. But, since it was being driven up to the time it reached the cross-roads, may we assume that the lights were on at that time, and would be alight for some considerable time after that?”

  “I don’t deny it, sir,” replied the other. “If they gave light enough to drive by, we can say that they would be alight for hours after the car was abandoned. But the car was there all night on that very lonely road, and part of next day, before it was found.”

  Ned thanked the manager, and left the garage with Nancy. She looked amusedly at her companion as they got once more into the car.

  “What about it, Dupin?” she asked.

  “Pudstey cross-roads and the farmer who owned the punt,” said Ned. “Possess your soul in patience a little longer, darling, and you can then help me dissect the new evidence.”

  “If Hench drove the car there, after murdering them, why would he leave on the lights?” asked Nancy. “You see, even women have gleams of intelligence.”

  “Whole searchlights, not mere gleams, I admit! he rallied her. “But that remark of yours isn’t one of them. If Hench committed the crimes and meant to throw the onus on old Habershon, he could argue, as well as you and I, that a man pursuing two people hastening away to drown themselves would not wait to cut off the lights on the car!—Did you observe the set of the head-lamps?”

  “No. What about them?”

  “They were set pretty high. We may also take it that they were on. An experienced driver in these narrow roads at night would have them on.”

  When they reached the farm-house, they interviewed the farmer’s wife for the second time. Her husband was in Upperton.

  “There is a question coming up about the car that was found at the cross-roads,” said Ned. “People are beginning to wonder why it was not seen before.”

  “After dark, sir?” she questioned.

  “Why not? The lights had been left on.”

  “Mortal few folk come this way, sir.”

  “Evidently, but I wondered if you or your husband had not seen it,” he replied. “I mean the beam from the headlights.”

  The farmer’s wife shook her head. “We’re early to bed here, and I don’t know that we could see it anyway; not from here.”

  She led her visitors outside, and pointed to the gable of the house facing to the cross-roads. It was a blank wall, with a cowshed against it to the height of the first storey.

  “If the lights were on, and some one had been sleeping here, they might have seen it, only there’s no window,” she told them. “I don’t know if they would have bothered though. Cars aren’t the strange sight they used to be,” she paused, then added, “Aren’t you the gentleman who came the other day about our punt?”

  Ned nodded, “Yes, how much do you want for it?”

  “I told my husband after you had gone, and he said you could have it for two pounds, sir.”

  Ned hesitated for a moment, then pulled out two notes. “Very well. I’ll buy it, if your husband will have it sent down, and moored opposite Fen Court,” he agreed.

  When she had made out a receipt, they thanked her and left.

  “I’d like to examine the thing,” Ned explained, as they drove on. “I can sell it easily enough.”

  “But aren’t you going to Fen Court now?” asked Nancy, as he turned the car presently down a side road that led south once more.

  “Not to-day—I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I am going home. Can I drop you anywhere, or are you doing anything to-day?”

  “Leave me at home,” she said. “I must really put in a call or two this afternoon. Bob Jameson has sent me a S O S. He’s fallen in love again, and he doesn’t know if Ferda will release him! Then Mrs. Gay has asked me to a tea-fight. I haven’t been near her for ages.”

  “Good enough,” said Ned. “I have lots to do myself, old thing. To-morrow, at the hour of ten, I’ll call for you, and we’ll get on the trail once more.”

  “Watchman, what of the light?” asked Nancy.

  “Still foggy,” said Ned. “From where the car was left, the headlights ought to have been beaconing over the hedge, and visible as a ray from the crossroads where Hench sets his alibi. He did not mention seeing a light there, did he?”

  “I did not hear him mention it, but, if he was asked about a light at Fen Court, he would naturally not worry about the beam of a car away to the west.”

  “That’s true,” said Ned, and suddenly announced his intention of going about once more to call on Hench. “Even the worms are allowed to turn,” he added.

  “But then they don’t boast of their intelligence,” she retorted.

  “No; they’re like sententious people; they make silence serve for wisdom,” he said. “Pax, my dear! We won’t fight till we have settled this business one way or the other.”

  Mr Hench was walking in the neglected orchard when they arrived. Though, apparently, he hoped Ned would help him to market the photographs, he was not so pleased to see him as on earlier occasions.

  “I am afraid you think me an awful bore,” Ned apologised. “But I am doing my best for you, and once I can convince Brews that you are about the most harmless man in this district, I shall be able to go ahead with those photographs of yours.”

  “I am sure Inspector Brews has never worried me,” said Hench, rather sulkily, “I don’t feel at all anxious about him.”

  Ned pursed his lips. “Ah, Brews is on a new line. It appears some one sent him two scraps of a letter addressed to Mr. Habershon, in a whitish-brown envelope. He’s going carefully into that. But what I want to know is something you can answer cheerfully.”

  Hench looked immediately perturbed and anxious. “What is it?”

  “When you were at the cross-roads that night, where you met the constable, did you see the lights of a car?” The relief that showed on Hench’s face was unmistakable. “Only one car passed me that night.”

  “I don’t mean passing you, or on that road at all. I mean did you see what looked like a steady, fixed beam from the headlights of a car near Pudstey cross-roads; in short, the lights of Mr. Habershon’s car?”

  Hench was not put out. “Now I come to think of it, I did. After I had spoken to the constable, I was looking about me, and I saw a sort of ray in the distance. It’s so flat here you can see a headlight for miles. But I thought it might come from the car owned by the farmer up there. In any case, I did not pay much attention to it.”

  Ned thanked him. “That’s all I wanted to know, and I think you will find it helps our case. Well, see you again some time, Mr. Hench. Miss Johnson and I have to scoot back to town now.”

  Chapter XXIV

  “ I’M making a night of it, Nancy, so I go home to bed in an hour,” Ned told the girl next day, when he called for her. “By the way, I had old Brews on the telephone this morning, and told him what we had done yesterday about the car inquiry. He seemed grateful, though I have a notion that he had an inkling already.”

  “About the lights,” said Nancy, as they walked down the hill, “and the farmer’s wife.”

  “Yes, and our talk with Hench. Hench, of course, is a puzzle. Sometimes I think he has cleared himself completely, and at other times I can’t see that the job could have been worked without him. It was such a brutal and beastly business anyway that the man who gets hanged for it won’t get a scrap of my sympathy. If it’s Hench, he’s an oily hypocrite as well.”

  “I wish we could decide one way or the other,” Nancy murmured.

  “I am going to have a shot at that to-night,” Ned told her. “I look at it this way: if we can get at the whereabouts of the stolen bonds, we shall discover at least one of the brutes. I have an idea that my guess about the parcel being thrown from the train is the right one, and I believe Brews thinks so, too.”

  “A needle in a haystack,” Nancy said, doubtfully.

  He agreed, but added: “If I only take one man at a time, I shall narrow it down. I am going to see if I can make up my mind about Hench, Now there can only be two theories about what he was doing down there. One is that he was trying to get material to finish his brother’s book, and blunderingly made a ‘hide’ in the marsh to watch what he thought was a hen-harrier. If that was all, then he is clear.”

  “But the proof, Ned, how are you going to get that?”

  “By investigating the other alternative, that he went down there as accomplice in a conspiracy of a criminal kind. Which ever way it works out, one thing is certain, and concrete, and that is the ‘hide’ itself. I can see, by studying two of the photographs he took, and comparing marks, the general position of the ‘hide’ itself.”

  “But he filled it up when the hawk flew away.”

  Ned smiled. “I know. If he filled it up, it suggests that the ‘hide’ was a hole he dug in the ground; camouflaged no doubt with reeds and rushes. If he dug a hole, and stayed in it all day, it was in a comparatively dry part of the marsh——”

  Nancy started. “I say, you don’t think he hid the Bearer Bonds there, meaning to dig them up again when all was clear, and the excitement had blown over?”

  Ned shrugged. “I can’t say that I think he did. If I thought so, there would be no question of his complicity in the business. What I do say is that I am going to take a spade with me to Fen Court, and do a little digging to-night after dark.”

  “But would the bonds not be damaged or destroyed?”

  “I don’t suppose they were simply buried in a paper parcel. Whoever picked up the bonds must have packed them more strongly before he put them underground.”

  “ If he did.”

  “Well, to-night will show that, one way or the other.”

  Nancy reflected. “I think it’s a bright idea of yours, but will Brews take it for granted that the finding of the bonds there can be linked up with Hench?”

  “There will be the presumption that he did it; especially as we are sure Hench sent those scraps of the letter anonymously to Brews. But that’s the inspector’s job. I told him what I thought of doing, and he was quite keen on it.”

  “He won’t interfere?”

  Ned shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, he goes this morning down to Hampshire to investigate another bit of the case. He wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

  “I wonder what he can want down there, Ned? He never mentioned Hampshire before, did he?”

  Ned shook his head. “No, but he’s a weird bird. Look here, Nancy. Do you mind doing a bit of shopping for me, before I go home? I want some stuff that won’t need to be cooked. You see, I may be a few days at Fen Court. What do you think I ought to have?”

  “I can get you tinned tongue, and things like that,” she replied. “You had better get some fresh bread at a village going down. Milk you can get bottled, and it will keep for a couple of days at this time of year. I’ll see about the other things for you now.”

  She went into the first grocer’s shop they came to, and came out again in a few minutes with a large parcel.

  “That ought to satisfy you, even if the marsh air gives you a whale of an appetite,” she told him, as he took the parcel. “What about the camp-bed?”

  “I won’t need it. I found an old sleeping-bag I used to have when I was camping. I’m taking that in the car to-night.”

  He left Nancy ten minutes later at the foot of Heath Street, and went back to his flat. He was rather more excited than usual, though he had not cared to exaggerate the potentialities of his theory to Nancy. He might be mistaken about the hide in the marsh, but it did seem an ideal place in which to conceal the bonds.

  Who would be likely to look there for them? So far, not even the astute Brews had suggested it; but he had caught an approving note in the inspector’s voice that morning, when he had spoken of his intentions, and Brews had replied that there might be something in it. Brews was a sport. He felt sure that he would not rush in and make the discovery himself.

  If the “hide” drew blank, Ned intended to spend the next few nights spying on Hench’s house, so he turned in ten minutes after he reached the flat, and managed to put in seven hours sleep, before he rose, had a bath, and sat down to a late tea.

  He took a thick coat with him, and a pair of woollen gloves, carried his parcel of groceries and the sleeping bag down to the car, and then went back to study the photographs of the marsh in conjunction with a large-scale ordnance map.

  “I think I can place it,” he mused, as he smoked contentedly, and conned the map lines. “It must have been where this ridge is raised a little above the level of the marsh. That comes just in the line between the windmill past Pudstey and the west side of my garden. Making a cross mark from Poljohn to the—— Yes, that’s it, as near as may be.”

  He pencilled a cross on his map, worked out two easily identified lines of approach to the spot marked, and rolled up the map again.

  He concluded that, as Hench was a small man, the hide would not be more than four feet deep. Probably he crouched in it, and concealed his head behind a fringe of reeds and rushes stuck round the side of the pit. It ought not to take much more than half an hour to dig down to the bottom of it.

  He dined early, and set off in his car at a quarter to eight. At nine, he was within a few miles of Fen Court, and switched off his headlamps; driving slowly and cautiously with side-lamps only. He met one car, but passed none when he had come to the marsh country. And, for the last seven miles of his drive, he did not encounter a single traveller on foot.

  When he turned his car into the tiny lane leading to the house, he put out the lamps, and went quietly into the grounds, with his sleeping-bag and parcel of groceries. He left these in the silent, gloomy house, suddenly recollected that he had not brought a lamp of any kind, and growled impatiently at his own forgetfulness.

  He had also forgotten to get bread or milk. Excitement, and eagerness to get on with this new quest, had driven such material matters out of his mind.

  The house struck cold. Even in his thick coat, he shivered as a draught from the open door came in. He shut the door.

  Switching on his pocket torch, he went into the sitting-room. He was not a nervous man, and far from superstitious, but he told himself that there was something beastly about the house. It smelt musty, it was icy cold. The dark rooms were intimidating. As he moved over to the window, a board creaked, and made him start. The echoes of his foot-falls were uncanny.

  He repressed an impulse to look over his shoulder, pulled out his cigarette case and lit up. Ugh! What was the use of standing there, looking into the dark garden, where the sinister ponds now lay invisible, and the damp wraith-like mists were creeping and drifting over the neglected paths, and derelict bushes. It would be better to tackle the job of work he had to do. Digging would warm him. If he came on the bonds, he would go back to town; or rush over to Upperton and sleep the night there.

  If he didn’t find them, at least the exercise with the spade would have driven out some of the chill engendered by the cold drive and the creepy, empty house.

  He threw his cigarette into the rusty grate, and turned back to the hall. The spade was still in the car. He went out for it, and felt sensibly relieved when he shut the door of the house behind him, and heard the last of the faint echoes that the clang had made in the deserted rooms.

  Taking the spade from the car, he stood still for a moment or two to get his bearings. Hench’s “hide” had not been far away, some hundreds of yards behind the house.

  He climbed through a gap in the low hedge bordering the little lane, and found himself on a bit of marshy ground. It was not very wet, and here and there clumps of stunted gorse and brambles were dotted about.