CHAPTER XVI
THE PATHLESS WOOD
Being very late in the evening when I arrived at Alnwick, I remained there for that night, and it was not until noon of the next day that I once more reached Ravensdene Court. Lorrimore was there, he had come over to lunch, and for the moment I hoped that he had brought some news from his Chinese servant. But he had heard nothing of Wing since his departure: it would scarcely be Wing's method, he said, to communicate with him by letter; when he had anything to tell, he would either return or act, of his own initiative, upon his acquired information: the way of the Chinaman, he remarked with a knowing look at Mr. Raven, was dark, subtle, and not easily understandable to Western minds.
"And yourself, Middlebrook?" asked Mr. Raven. "What did the detective want, and what have you found out?"
I told them the whole story as we sat at lunch. They were all deeply absorbed, but no one so much as Mr. Cazalette, who, true to his principle of doing no more than crumbling a dry biscuit and sipping a glass or two of sherry at that hour, gave my tale of the doings at Blyth and Hull his undivided attention. And when he had heard me out, he slipped away in silence, evidently very thoughtful, and disappeared into the library.
"So there it all is," I said in conclusion, "and if anybody can make head or tail of it and get a definite and dependable theory, I am sure that Scarterfield, from a professional standpoint, will be glad to hear whatever can be said."
"It seems to me that Scarterfield is on the high road to a very respectable theory already," remarked Lorrimore. "So are you! The thing—to me—appears to be fairly plain. It starts out with the association of Baxter and the dishonest bank-manager. The bank-manager, left in charge of this old-fashioned bank at Blyth, where any supervision of his doings was no doubt pretty slack, and where he was, of course, fully trusted, examines the nature of the various matters committed to his care, and finds out the contents of those Forestburne chests. He then enters into a conspiracy with Baxter for purloining them and some other valuables—those jewels you mentioned, Middlebrook. It would not be a difficult thing to get them away from the bank premises without anyone knowing. Then the two conspirators secrete them in a safe and unlikely place, easily accessible, I take it, from the sea. Probably, they meant to remove them for good and all, just before the dishonest bank-manager's temporary residence in the town came to an end. But his fatal accident occurs. Then Master Baxter is placed in a nice fix! He knows that his fellow-criminal's sudden death will necessarily lead to some examination, more or less thorough, of the effects at the bank. That examination, to be sure, was made. But Baxter has gone, cleared out, vanished, before the result is known. He may have had an idea—we can only guess at it—that suspicion would fall on him. Anyway, he leaves the town, and is never seen in or near it again. If this theory is a true one, things seem pretty clear up to this point."
"Of course," said I, "it is theory! All supposition, you know."
"Right!" assented Lorrimore. "But let us theorise a bit further—I am, you see, merely following out the train of thought which seems to have been set up in you and in Scarterfield. Baxter disappears. Nobody knows where he's gone. There is a veil drawn over a certain period—pretty thickly. But we, who have had occasion to try to pierce it, have seen, so we think, through certain tears and rifts in it. We know that a certain number of years ago there was a trading ship in the Yellow Sea, the Elizabeth Robinson, concerning the fate of which there is more mystery than is quite in accordance with either safety or respectability. She was bound from Hong-Kong to Chemulpo, and she never reached Chemulpo. But we also know that on her, when she left Hong-Kong there were two men, presumably brothers, whose names were Noah Quick and Salter Quick, set down, mind you, not as members of the crew, but as passengers. Also there was a Chinese cook, of the name of Lo Chuh Fen. And there was another man, who called himself Netherfield, and who hailed from Blyth, in Northumberland."
He looked round the table, evidently bent on securing our attention to their particular point. We were all, of course, fully acquainted with the details he was unfolding, but he was summing things up in quite judicial fashion, and there was a certain amount of intellectual satisfaction in listening to a succinct résumé. One of us, at any rate, was following him with rapt attention—Miss Raven. I fancied I saw why—Baxter, or Netherfield, had already presented himself to her as a personage of a dark and romantic, if deeply-wicked and even blood-stained sort.