At that moment Polke's domestic servant tapped at the door and put her head inside the room.
"If you please, Mr. Polke, there's Mrs. Pratt, from the Station Hotel, would like a word with you," she said.
The superintendent hurried from the room—to return at once with a stout, middle-aged woman, who, as she entered, raised her veil and glanced half-suspiciously at Polke's other visitors.
"All friends here, Mrs. Pratt," said the superintendent reassuringly. "You know young Mr. Neale well enough. This lady is Mr. Horbury's niece—anxious to find him. That gentleman's a friend of mine—you can say aught you like before him. Well, ma'am!—you think you can tell me something about this affair? What might it be, now?"
Mrs. Pratt, taking the chair which Starmidge placed for her at the end of the table, nodded a general greeting to the company, and lifting her veil and untying her bonnet-strings, revealed a good-natured countenance.
"Well, Mr. Polke," she said, turning to the superintendent, "taking your word for it that we're all friends—me being pretty sure, all the same, that this gentleman's one of your own profession, which I don't object to—I'll tell you what it is I've come up for, special, as it were, and me not waiting until after closing-time to do it. But that town-crier's been down our way, and hearing him making his call between our house and the station, and learning what it was all about, thinks I to myself, 'I'd best go up and see the super and tell him what I know.' And," concluded Mrs. Pratt, beaming around her, "here I am!"
"Ay—and what do you know, ma'am?" asked Polke. "Something, of course."
"Or I shouldn't be here," agreed Mrs. Pratt, smoothing out a fold of her gown. "Well—Saturday afternoon, the time being not so many minutes after the 5.30 got in, and therefore you might say at the outside twenty minutes to six, a strange gentleman walked across from the station to our hotel, which is, as you're all well aware, exactly opposite. I happened to be in the bar-parlour window at the time, and I saw him crossing—saw, likewise, from the way he looked about him, and up at the town above us, that he'd never been in Scarnham before. And happen I'd best tell you what like he was, while the recollection's fresh in my mind—a little gentleman he was, very well dressed in what you might call the professional style; dark clothes and so forth, and a silk top-hat; I should say about fifty years of age, with a fresh complexion and a biggish grey moustache and a nicely rolled umbrella—quite the little swell he was. He made for our door, and I went to the bar-window to attend to him. He wanted to know if he could get some food, and I said of course he could—we'd some uncommon nice chops in the house. So he ordered three chops and setterers—and then he asked if we'd a telephone in the house, and could he use it. And, of course, I told him we had, and showed him where it was—after which he wanted a local directory, and I gave him Scammond's Guide. He turned that over a bit, and then, when he'd found what he wanted, he went to our telephone box—which, as you're well aware, Mr. Polke, is in our front hall. And into it he popped."
Mrs. Pratt paused a moment, and gave her listeners a knowing look, as if she was now about to narrate the most important part of her story.
"But what you mayn't be aware of, Mr. Polke," she continued, "is that our telephone box, which has glass panels in its upper parts, has at this present time one of these panels broken—our pot-man did it, carrying a plank through the hall. So that any one passing to and fro, as it were, when anybody's using the telephone, can't help hearing a word or two of what's being said inside. Now, of course, I was passing in and out, giving orders for this gentleman's chops, when he was in the box. And I heard a bit of what he said, though I didn't, naturally, hear aught of what was said to him, nor who by. But it's in consequence of what I did hear, and of what Tolson, the town-crier, has been shouting down our way tonight, that I come up here to see you."