“But do you suggest that both Mr. Berlyn and Mr. Pyke were murdered? If so, where’s the second body?”
“What if one murdered the other?”
But this was too much for the sergeant.
“Oh, come now, sir,” he protested. “You didn’t know them. You couldn’t suspect either of those gentlemen of such a crime. Not possibly, you couldn’t.”
“You think not? But what if I tell you that the man who claimed the crate at Swansea answered the description you gave me of Berlyn?”
Sergeant Daw swore. “I shouldn’t have believed it,” he declared.
“Well, there are the facts. You will see, therefore, that I must have first-hand information about the whole thing. I’ve read all that the papers can tell me, but that’s not enough. I want to go out on the moor with you and hear your story at the place where the thing happened. Particularly I want to test that matter of the breakdown. How can we get to know about that?”
“Easily enough, I think.” The man spoke with some relief, as if turning to a pleasanter subject. “Makepeace has the car and he’ll be able to tell us. That’s the owner of one of the local garages.”
“Good! How did Makepeace get hold of it?”
“When we came in after finding it that night I sent young Makepeace out for it. That’s the son. He couldn’t start it and he had to take out another car and tow it in. He took it to the garage for repairs and it has lain there ever since. Then when Mrs. Berlyn was leaving, Makepeace bought it from her. I understand he wants to sell it now.”