The Middle of Things

by J. S. Fletcher

"Oh, yes sir!" replied Lucy Summers. "We constantly have gentlemen there, sir."

"Very well," said Mr. Pawle. "Now, then, you run away home to Marketstoke, my dear, and tell your grandmother that I'm very much obliged to her, and that I am coming down this evening, with this gentleman, Mr. Viner, and that we shall be obliged if she'll have a nice, plain, well-cooked dinner ready for us at half-past seven. We shall come in my motorcar—you can put that up for the night, and my driver too? Very well—that's settled. Now, come along, and one of my clerks shall get you a cab to your station. Great Central, isn't it? All right—mind you get yourself a cup of tea before going home."

"Viner," Pawle continued when he had taken the girl into the outer office, "we can easily run down to Marketstoke in under two hours. I'll call for you at your house at half-past five. That'll give us time to wash away the dirt before our dinner. And then—we'll hear what this old lady has to tell."

Viner, who was musing somewhat vaguely over these curious developments, looked at Mr. Pawle as if in speculation about his evident optimism.

"You think we shall hear something worth hearing?" he asked.

"I should say we probably shall," replied Mr. Pawle. "Put things together. Ashton goes away—as soon as he's got settled down in Markendale Square—on a somewhat mysterious journey. Now we hear that he had a secret. Perhaps something relating to that secret is mixed up with his visit to Marketstoke. Depend upon it, an old woman of over seventy—especially a landlady of a country-town inn, whose wits are presumably pretty sharp—wouldn't send for me unless she'd something to tell. Before midnight, my dear sir, we may have learnt a good deal."

Viner picked up his hat.

"I'll be ready for you at half-past five," he said. Then, halfway to the door, he turned with a question: "By the by," he added, "you wouldn't like me to tell the two ladies that we've found out where Ashton went when he was away?"

"I think not until we've found out why he went away," answered the old lawyer with a significant smile. "We may draw the covert blank, you know, after all. When we've some definite news—"

Viner nodded, went out, into the afternoon calm of Bedford Row. As he walked up it, staring mechanically at the old-fashioned red brick fronts, he wondered how many curious secrets had been talked over and perhaps unravelled in the numerous legal sanctuaries approached through those open doorways. Were there often as strange ones as that upon which he had so unexpectedly stumbled? And when they first came into the arena of thought and speculation did they arouse as much perplexity and mental exercise as was now being set up in him? Did every secret, too, possibly endanger a man's life as his old schoolfellow's was being endangered? He had no particular affection or friendship for Langton Hyde, of whom, indeed, he had known very little at school, but he had an absolute conviction that he was innocent of murder, and that conviction had already aroused in him a passionate determination to outwit the police. He had been quick to see through Drillford's plans. There was a case, a strong prima facie case against Hyde, and the police would work it up for all they were worth. Failing proofs in other directions, failing the discovery of the real murderer, how was that case going to be upset? And was it likely that he and Pawle were going to find any really important evidence in an obscure Buckinghamshire market-town?