“Very well, sir,” the inspector grinned. “I can see you’re determined to come, so I suppose I shall have to take you with me. But it’ll have to be as that personal friend of mine, mind, not as a newspaper-man.”
“On my oath!” said Roger piously. “In any case I wouldn’t— Oh, Heavens, talk hard and don’t let me be buttonholed. This is the most persistent talker in the south of England coming along the road toward us.”
“When you’re in the north, Roger,” Anthony amended humorously.
“His name is the Rev. Samuel Meadows,” Roger went on to the inspector. “He caught me on the cliffs this morning and held me for half-an-hour by the clock. The Ancient Mariner couldn’t make a match of it with him.”
In some curiosity the other two watched the little clerical figure approach. He smiled benignly as he recognised Roger and touched the wide brim of his hat in a somewhat expansive gesture, but made no attempt to speak.
“Saved!” Roger murmured dramatically as they passed him. “Friends, I thank you!”
But the inspector did not smile. His brow was corrugated and he was tugging at his long-suffering moustache.
“Now, where the dickens,” he remarked very thoughtfully to his boots, “have I seen that face before?”
Chapter XI.
Inspector Moresby Conducts an Interview
Clouston Hall, the home of Sir Henry and Lady Woodthorpe, was a stolidly built Georgian house, with the usual aspect of square solidity so happily typical of its period. It stood in its own grounds of nine or ten acres, and as Roger and the inspector made their way up the trim drive the setting sun was burnishing the mellow brick of its front to a deeper red and slanting over the velvety expanse of lawn, unprofaned by tennis nets or chalk lines, which faced it across the broad carriage-sweep.