“He was working his way through correspondence college,” Simon replied gravely, “with a line of hogwash and fertiliser. I told him we didn’t keep hogs and we weren’t farming, and he went away.”
Morland nodded as if he had scarcely heard. His face looked lined and fretful with worry.
The girl took his arm.
“We want to know how you got on,” she said.
“I didn’t get on at all,” Morland said flatly, and her shoulders drooped.
“Then—”
“The sheriff wasn’t there. The sheriff wasn’t in town. The sheriff was away. Nobody knew where he was. The sheriff was busy on some case. Nobody knew anything about the case or how to get in touch with him. Nobody knew when he’d be back.”
“But didn’t he have any deputies?”
“Oh, yes, there was a deputy in the office. He’d be glad to do anything he could for me. But this was a bit too much. He didn’t rightly know what the law was in a case like this. He reckoned this was too much responsibility for him to take on his own. He’d have to talk to the sheriff about it. But he didn’t know exactly how to get hold of the sheriff. Of course, he’d be back. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Certainly before the end of the week... And that was all I could do.”
The pounding of clipped bitter sentences died away with the last one into a dull hopelessness. Morland gave his daughter’s hand a little squeeze and turned towards a chair. She looked at the Saint, and he gave a faint tight-lipped shrug.