He soon saw there were a number. Tiverton, Ashburton, Silverton, Merton, Halberton, Thorverton, Yelverton, Otterton, and Staverton he picked up at once from the atlas, and he felt sure there must be others, too small to be marked. His next step must therefore be to try if a small, elderly man with a grey beard, named William Douglas, lived in —Cottage, Tiverton, Ashburton, or one of the other places he had found.
He took a sheet of paper and drafted a letter to the chief of the local police at each of these places, asking him to forward the information with regard to his own neighbourhood.
Two days later he received a wire from Yelverton. ‘William Douglas lives at Myrtle Cottage near Yelverton Station.’
Tanner chuckled. He was getting on more rapidly than he could have hoped.
Chapter XII.
A Stern Chase
When the 10.30 a.m. Riviera express pulled out of Paddington next morning, Inspector Tanner was occupying a corner seat in one of its first-class compartments. In his pocket was a warrant for the arrest of William Douglas, in case his investigations should indicate that such a step was desirable. He had determined that if his victim could not account satisfactorily for his actions on the night of the murder, or if his boots fitted the marks on the Cranshaw River bank, no other course would be possible.
Once again the Inspector was favoured with magnificent weather for his country ramble. Indeed, like the previous days, it was too hot, and as the train slipped swiftly through the sun-baked country, he moved into the corridor so as to make the most of the draught from the open windows. Each time that he had made this journey in the past he had enjoyed it, especially the portion between Exeter and Newton Abbott—down the estuary of the Exe, past Dawlish and Teignmouth with their queer spiky, red rocks, and precipitous little cliffs running out into the blue sea, then farther on inland again through the hilly, wooded country of South Devon, where one caught unexpected glimpses of tiny, nestling villages, and of narrow lanes, winding mysteriously, between mossy, flower-spangled banks under the cool shade of overhanging trees.
He reached Plymouth—the first stop since leaving Paddington—shortly before three. Changing at North Road, he boarded a branch line train after a short wait. A run of a few minutes brought him to Yelverton. Here he alighted, and when the Launceston and Princetown trains had rumbled off, he accosted the stationmaster.
‘I am looking for a Mr William Douglas of Myrtle Cottage,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me where that is?’
The stationmaster could. Myrtle Cottage, it appeared, was half a mile away on the road to Dousland, and Tanner, having received directions as to his route, set off to walk.