“Can’t say,” answered the Chief Constable. “I should imagine that he’d reasons of his own for keeping silence—especially after he’d heard Grimsdale say that he couldn’t identify the third man of the party.”
“Well, there’s another queer thing,” remarked Blick. “Von Eckhardstein must have known that, eventually, this man Lansbury would come forward! He’d known that Lansbury would let the truth out—as he has. We’ve got at that, anyhow!”
“Have we got at the truth of anything?” asked the Chief Constable a little cynically. “If we’re going in for mere theorizing, I can suggest a dozen theories. Here’s one to cogitate over, Blick—supposing there’s some big financial operation at the bottom of all this, and that the removal of Guy Markenmore was a necessity to those chiefly responsible? I’ve known of men getting a bullet through their brains simply because they were in the way! And as to truth—well, give me proof! Truth’s not so easy to come at in these matters—and I doubt if we shall get any substantial contribution to it here,” he added significantly, as they drove up to the Dower House.
“Haven’t the least idea what we shall get!” responded Blick, equally cynical. “But we may find something.”
What they did find was Mrs. Tretheroe in a state of high excitement. She was convinced that her guest, unable to sleep, had gone out for one of his midnight strolls, and had fallen into some old pit or disused quarry. Her own men-servants, several villagers, and the local policeman had been searching for him since breakfast-time, with no result. She scouted the idea that he had taken it into his head to go away, and it was with scorn and indignation that she gave Blick his private and business addresses in London. Blick cared nothing for either indignation or scorn; he went off to the village telegraph office and wired for news; he also sent private messages of his own to headquarters in London in furtherance of his object—one way or another, he meant to have news of von Eckhardstein.
“After all,” he said to the Chief Constable, as they lunched together at the Sceptre, “there’s no getting away from the fact that, according to our information, von Eckhardstein was the last person who saw Guy Markenmore alive!”
“No!” answered the Chief Constable. “You’re wrong, Blick. The last person who saw Guy Markenmore alive was the man who murdered him.”
Blick regarded this as a verbal quibble and changed the subject. Late in the afternoon he got replies to his various telegrams. Nothing had been seen or heard of von Eckhardstein at his usual London haunts. Nor, when night fell again, had any news of him come to hand in Markenmore.
CHAPTER XVI