Starmidge turned up Cordmaker's Alley, regained the Market-Place, and strolled on to Polke's private house. The superintendent was taking his ease after his day's labours and reading the Ecclesborough evening newspapers: he tossed one of them over to his visitor.
"All there!" he said, pointing to some big headlines. "Got it all in, just as you told it to Parkinson. Full justice to the descriptions of both Horbury and the Station Hotel stranger. Smart work, eh?"
"Power of the Press—as Parkinson said," answered Starmidge, with a laugh. "It's very useful, the Press: I don't know how they managed without it in the old days of criminal catching, Mr. Polke. Press and telegraph, eh?—they're valuable adjuncts."
"You think all that would be in the London papers this evening?" asked Polke.
"Sure to be," replied Starmidge. "I'm hoping we'll hear something from London tomorrow. I say—I've been taking a bit of a look round one or two places tonight, quietly, you know. What's that curious building in Joseph Chestermarke's garden?"
Polke put down his paper and looked unusually interested.
"I don't know!" he answered. "How did you see it? I've never seen inside his garden."
"Climbed a tree on the river-bank and looked over the wall," replied Starmidge.
"Well," said Polke, "I did hear, some few years ago, that he was building something in that garden, but the work was done by Ecclesborough contractors, and nobody ever knew much about it here. I believe Joseph's a bit of an amateur experimenter—but I don't know what he experiments in. Nobody ever goes inside his house—he's a hermit."
"He's got some sort of a forge there, anyhow," said Starmidge. "Or a furnace, or something of that sort."