Far away or near away, it took me some hours to get to Blyth, for I had to drive to Alnwick, and later to change at Morpeth, and again at Newsham. But there I was at last, in the middle of the afternoon, and there, on the platform to meet me was the detective, as rubicund and cheerful as ever, and full of gratitude for my speedy response to his request.
"I got your telegram, Mr. Middlebrook," he remarked as we walked away from the station, "and I've booked you the most comfortable room I could get in the hotel, which is a nice quiet house where we'll be able to talk in privacy, for barring you and myself there's nobody stopping in it, except a few commercial travellers, and to be sure, they've their own quarters. You'll have had your lunch?"
"While I waited at Morpeth," I answered.
"Aye," he said, "I figured on that. So we'll just get into a corner of the smoking-room and have a quiet glass over a cigar, and I'll tell you what I've made out here—and a very strange and queer tale it is, and one that's worth hearing, whether it really has to do with our affair or no!"
"You're not sure that it has?" I asked.
"I'm as sure as may be that it probably has!" he replied. "But still, there's a gulf between extreme probability and absolute certainty that's a bit wider than the unthinking reckon for. However, here we are—and we'll just get comfortable."
Scarterfield's ideas of comfort, I found, were to dispose himself in the easiest of chairs in the quietest of corners with whisky and soda on one hand and a box of cigars on the other—this sort of thing he evidently regarded as a proper relaxation from his severe mental labours. I had no objection to it myself after four hours slow travelling—yet I confess I felt keenly impatient until he had mixed our drinks, lighted his cigar and settled down at my elbow.
"Now," he said confidentially, "I'll set it all out in order—what I've done and found out since I came here two days ago. There's no need, Mr. Middlebrook, to go into detail about how I set to work to get information: we've our own ways and methods of getting hold of stuff when we strike a strange town. But you know what I came here for. There's been talk, all through this case, of the name Netherfield—from the questions that Salter Quick put to you when you met him on the cliffs, and from what was said at the Mariner's Joy. Very good—now I fell across that name, too, in my investigations in London, as being the name of a man who was on the Elizabeth Robinson, of uncertain memory, lost or disappeared in the year 1907, with the two Quicks. He was set down, that Netherfield, as being of Blyth, Northumberland. Clearly, then, Blyth was a place to get in touch with—and here in Blyth we are!"
"A clear bit of preface, Scarterfield," said I approvingly. "Go ahead! I'm bearing in mind that you've been here forty-eight hours."
"I've made good use of my time!" he chuckled, with a knowing grin. "Although I say it myself, Mr. Middlebrook, I'm a bit of a hustler. Well, self-praise, they say, is no recommendation, though to be sure I'm no believer in that old proverb, for, after all, who knows a man better than himself? So we'll get to the story. I came here, of course, to see if I could learn anything of a man of this place who answered to what I had already learnt about Netherfield of the Elizabeth Robinson. I went to the likely people for news, and I very soon found out something. Nobody knew anything of any man, old or young, named William Netherfield, belonging, present or past, to this town. But a good many people—most, if not all people—do know of a man who used to be in much evidence here some years ago; a man of the name of Netherfield Baxter."