“But according to Mrs. Braxfield—and you seem to agree with her—these folks would tell for a five-pound note,” said Blick with a cynical laugh. “Why didn’t you try that in the case you mention?”
“We may do yet,” replied the Chief Constable. “The victim himself seems inclined to hush the matter up, fearing worse things—but we may try a reward. In this Markenmore affair, however, Mrs. Braxfield is going to try a monetary offer—out of pure pique, I fancy!—and it won’t surprise me if something results. If I were you, Blick, I should keep my ears on the stretch during the next twenty-four hours. I don’t know what she’ll offer, but if it’s something substantial, there’ll be a vast amount of cupidity aroused amongst these rustics—I know ’em!”
Blick got up from the elbow-chair in which, since Chilford’s abrupt departure, he had been sitting with his legs stretched out and his hands in his pockets, looking perplexed and somewhat disconsolate.
“I may as well be going back then,” he muttered. “Hanged if I know even now, if we didn’t part with Mrs. Braxfield a bit too easily!”
“She’ll not run away,” retorted the Chief Constable, with a significant nod of his head. “And if it’s all a piece of bluff——”
He paused as a policeman entered the room and laid a card before him.
“The gentleman’s waiting outside, sir,” said the policeman.
The Chief Constable glanced at the card, started, and turned to Blick.
“Sir Thomas Hodges-Wilkins!” he murmured surprisedly. “That big scientific chap!—Professor, from Cambridge, that that fellow Spindler told us about. What on earth can he want? Bring him in, Jarvis,” he went on. “Set a chair there.” He looked wonderingly at the detective. “Another development!” he muttered. “What now?”
Blick made no reply. He was watching the door, through which suddenly appeared a man who was not at all the sort of person that Blick expected to see. Instead of being old, and grave, and bald, and bearded, and spectacled, and dressed anyhow, the famous professor of chemistry was a smart, alert, rather military-looking man, fastidiously attired, wearing a monocle instead of spectacles, and endowed with a breezy air and cheery smile, which he bestowed freely on the two occupants of the room as he marched in and seated himself by the Chief Constable’s desk, on the edge of which he laid down two or three newspapers, heavily marked here and there with blue pencil.