Ravensdene Court

by J. S. Fletcher

"That's it!" he exclaimed. "Hanged if I don't think that myself! It's my opinion that this Netherfield Baxter, when he hooked it out of here, got into far regions and strange company, came into touch with those Quicks and told 'em the secret of this stolen plate—he was, I'm sure, the Netherfield of that ship the Quicks were on. Yes, sir!—I think we may safely bet on it that Salter Quick, as you say, was looking for this plate!"

"And—so was somebody else," said I. "And it was that somebody else who murdered Salter Quick."

"Aye!" he assented. "Now—who? That's the question. And what's the next thing to do, Mr. Middlebrook?"

"It seems to me that the next thing to do is to find out all you can about this plate," I replied. "If I were you, I should take two people into your confidence—the head man, director, chairman, or whatever he is, at the bank—and the present Lord Forestburne."

"I will!" he agreed. "I'll see 'em both, first thing tomorrow morning. Do you go with me, Mr. Middlebrook? You'll explain these old papers better than I should."

So Scarterfield and I spent that evening together in the little hotel, and after dinner I explained the inventories more particularly. I came to the conclusion that if the four thousand ounces of plate specified in them were in the chests which the dishonest temporary bank-manager had stolen, he had got a very fine haul: the value, of course, of the plate, was not so much intrinsic as extrinsic: there were collectors, English and American, who would cheerfully give vast sums for pre-Reformation sacramental vessels. Transactions of this kind, I fancied, must have been in the minds of the thieves. There were features of the whole affair which puzzled me—not the least important was my wonder that this plate, undeniably church property, should have remained so long in the Forestburne family without being brought into the light of day. I hoped that our inquiries next morning would bring some information on that point.

But we got no information—at least, none of any consequence. All that was known by the authorities at the bank was that the late Lord Forestburne had deposited two chests of plate with them years before, with instructions that they were to remain in the bank's custody until his son succeeded him—even then they were not to be opened unless the son had already come of age. The bank people had no knowledge of the precise contents of the chests—all they knew was that they contained plate. As for the present Lord Forestburne, a very young man, he knew nothing, except that his father's mysterious deposit had been burgled by a dishonest custodian. He expressed no opinion about anything, therefore. But the chief authority at the bank, a crusty and self-sufficient old gentleman, who seemed to consider Scarterfield and myself as busybodies, poohpoohed the notion that the inventories which we showed him had anything to do with the rifled Forestburne chests, and scorned the notion that the family had ever been in possession of goods obtained by sacrilege.

"Preposterous!" said he, with a sniff of contempt. "What the chests contained was, of course, superfluous family plate. As for these documents, that fellow Baxter, in spite of his loose manner of living, was, I remember, a bit inclined to scholarship, and went in for old books and things—a strange mixture altogether. He probably picked up these parchments in some book-seller's shop in Durham or Newcastle. I don't believe they've anything to do with Lord Forestburne's stolen property, and I advise you both not to waste time in running after mare's nests."

Scarterfield and I got ourselves out of this starchy person's presence and confided to each other our private opinions of him and his intelligence. For to us the theory which we had set up was unassailable: we tried to reduce it to strict and formal precision as we ate our lunch in a quiet corner of the hotel coffee-room, previous to parting.

"More than one of us, Scarterfield, who have taken part in this discussion, have said that if we are going to get at the truth of things we shall have to go back," I observed. "Well, what you have found out here takes us back some way. Let us suppose—we can't do anything without a certain amount of supposition—let us, I say, for the sake of argument, suppose that the man Netherfield of Blyth, who was with Noah and Salter Quick on the ship Elizabeth Robinson, bound from Hong-Kong to Chemulpo is the same person as Netherfield Baxter, who certainly lived in this town a few years ago. Very well—now then, what do we know of Baxter? We know this—that a dishonest bank-manager stole certain valuables from the bank, died suddenly just afterwards, and that Baxter disappeared just as suddenly. The supposition is that Baxter was concerned in that theft. We'll suppose more—that Baxter knew where the stolen goods were; had, in fact, helped to secrete them. Well, the next we hear of him is—supposing him to be Netherfield—on this ship, which, according to the reports you got at Lloyds, was lost with all hands in the Yellow Sea. But—a big but!—we know now that whatever happened to the rest of those on board her, three men at any rate saved their lives—Noah Quick, Salter Quick and the Chinese cook, whose exact name we've forgotten, but one of whose patronymics was Chuh. Chuh turns up at Lloyds, in London, and asks a question about the ship. Noah Quick materialises at Devonport, and runs a public-house. Salter joins him there. And presently Salter is up on the Northumbrian coast, professing great anxiety to find a churchyard, or churchyards wherein are graves with the name Netherfield on them—he makes the excuse that that is the family name of his mother's people. Now we know what happened to Salter Quick, and we also know what happened to Noah Quick. But now I'm wondering if something else had happened before that?"