The landlord poked a stout forefinger into Neale's waistcoat.
"Aye!" he said. "Aye, so I do!—as to what you might call surface matter, Mr. Neale. But—about the main thing, which, in my opinion, is the whereabouts of John Horbury? Does yon young lady at the Scarnham Arms know aught more about her uncle? Do you? Does anybody? Is there aught behind, like; aught that hasn't come out on the top?"
"I don't know of anything," replied Neale. "I wish I did! Miss Fosdyke's very anxious indeed about her uncle: she'd give anything or do anything to get news of him. It's all rot, you know, to say he's run away—it's my impression he's never gone out of Scarnham or the neighbourhood. But where he is, and whether dead or alive, is beyond my comprehension," he concluded, shaking his head. "If he's alive, why don't we hear something, or find out something?"
Walford gave his companion a quick glance out of his shrewd old eyes.
"He might be under such circumstances as wouldn't admit of that there, Mr. Neale," he said. "But come!—I've got something to tell you—something that I found out not half an hour ago. I was going on to tell Polke about it at once, but I remembered that you were in the house at this cricket club meeting, so I thought you'd do instead—you can tell Polke. I'm in a bit of a hurry myself—you know it's Wymington Races tomorrow, and I'm off there tonight, at once, to meet a man that I do a bit of business with in these matters—we make a book together, d'ye see—so I can't stop. But come this way."
He led Neale out into the long sanded passage, and down through the rear of the old house into a big stable-yard, enclosed by variously shaped buildings, more or less in an almost worn-out and dilapidated condition, whose roofs and gables showed picturesquely against the sky, faintly lighted by the waning moon. To one of these, a tower-like erection, considerably higher than the rest, the old landlord pointed.
"I suppose you know that these back premises of mine partly overlook Joseph Chestermarke's garden?" he whispered. "They do, anyway—you can see right over his garden and the back of his house—that is, in bits, for he's a fine lot of tall trees round his lawns. But there's a very fair view of that workshop he's built from the top storey of this old dove-cot of mine—we use it as a store-house. Come up—and mind these here broken steps—there's no rail, you see, and you could easy fall over."
He led his companion up a flight of much-worn stone stairs which were built against the wall of the old dove-cot; through an open doorway twenty feet above; across a rickety floor; and up another stairway of wood, into a chamber in which was a latticed window, from which most of the glass and the woodwork had disappeared.
"Now, then," he said, taking Neale to this outlook, and pointing downwards. "There you are!—you see what I mean?"
Neale looked out. Joseph Chestermarke's big garden lay beneath him. As Walford had said, much of it was obscured by trees, but there was a good prospect of one side of the laboratory from where Neale was standing. That side was furnished with a door—and on the level of that door at the extreme end of the building was a window fitted with a light-coloured blind. All the other windows, as in the case of the side which Neale had seen previously from the tree on the river-bank, were high up in the walls and fitted with red material. And from the curiously shaped smoke stack in the flat roof, the same differently tinted vapours which he had noticed on the same occasion were curling up above the elms and beeches.