“Why didn’t he come forward at the inquest and tell us what Mr. Lansbury has just told us?” answered Blick. “He’d the chance!—and he sat there and said nothing. Von Eckhardstein knows something—and he must be found. I wish I’d laid hands on him last night. Now, we must get to work on tracking him. You’d better come out with me to Markenmore, and let’s see into things.”
“I hope you don’t want me?” said Lansbury. “I am particularly anxious to get back to Falmouth. But I shall return from Falmouth in two days, and shall then be for several days at Southampton—close by you.”
“Leave us an address—or addresses—that will find you at short notice,” said Blick. “There’s no need to keep you from your business, Mr. Lansbury. And we’d better be getting to work on our own!”
He presently hurried the Chief Constable off to Markenmore and Mrs. Tretheroe. The events and revelations of the morning had given him an entirely new conception of the case in hand, and he was now blaming himself bitterly for not having asked von Eckhardstein to account for his possession of the pipe as soon as he had discovered that it was in the financier’s overcoat pocket.
“But I was saving that up for this morning,” he said grumblingly, as he and the Chief Constable drove along to Markenmore. “I meant to stop him as he was entering the station to catch that ten-eight express; tell him that you and I wanted some information from him, to get him to your office, and have things out with him. Now—it’s too late!”
“You don’t know that yet, Blick,” remarked the Chief Constable. “If this man was accustomed to strolling about at night he may easily have had an accident, and be lying in some lonely part of those downs or woods waiting for help. Anyhow, so far, I don’t see anything to incriminate him—in my opinion.”
“He was the last man known to be with Guy Markenmore,” said Blick.
“Maybe! But it isn’t likely that he’d murder him for the sake of those bank notes!” retorted the Chief Constable. “Von Eckhardstein’s name is known to me—he’s a man who’s dealt in millions in his time, and been in at some of the biggest flotations of late years. My opinion is that he walked some distance up that path with Guy Markenmore, left him, returned to the Dower House, and knew nothing of Markenmore’s murder until he heard of it later. Markenmore met the actual murderer after he parted with von Eckhardstein, and I should say that the murderer is a man who was thoroughly conversant with Markenmore’s movements and doings, knew that he was to take that path to Mitbourne Station, and lay in wait for him at Markenmore Hollow. That’s how I work it out.”
Blick made no reply to this for a few minutes. The Chief Constable’s dogcart had covered another half-mile of road before he spoke.
“There’s no doubt that the briar-wood pipe of which we’ve heard a good deal was von Eckhardstein’s,” he said, at last. “Nor that he left it at the Sceptre, nor that Grimsdale produced it at the inquest, nor that von Eckhardstein picked it up from the solicitor’s table as he went out. Now, if he’s an absolutely innocent man, why didn’t he get up at that inquest, explain his presence at the Sceptre, admit that he did leave his pipe there, and behave candidly and openly, instead of keeping everything back and purloining that pipe as cleverly as any pickpocket? Come!”