“You think my father was worked upon by this man Chamberlayne, sir?” observed Breton a few minutes later when they had all sat down round Mr. Quarterpage’s hospitable hearth. “You think he was unduly influenced by him?”
Mr. Quarterpage shook his head sadly.
“Chamberlayne, my dear young sir,” he answered. “Chamberlayne was a plausible and a clever fellow. Nobody knew anything about him until he came to this town, and yet before he had been here very long he had contrived to ingratiate himself with everybody—of course, to his own advantage. I firmly believe that he twisted your father round his little finger. As I told Mr. Spargo there when he was making his enquiries of me a short while back, it would never have been any surprise to me to hear—definitely, I mean, young gentlemen—that all this money that was in question went into Chamberlayne’s pockets. Dear me—dear me!—and you really believe that Chamberlayne is actually alive, Mr. Spargo?”
Spargo pulled out his watch. “We shall all know whether he was buried in that grave before another six hours are over, Mr. Quarterpage,” he said.
He might well have spoken of four hours instead of six, for it was then nearly midnight, and before three o’clock Spargo and Breton, with the other men who had accompanied them from London were out of the “Yellow Dragon” and on their way to the cemetery just outside the little town. Over the hills to the eastward the grey dawn was slowly breaking: the long stretch of marshland which lies between Market Milcaster and the sea was white with fog: on the cypresses and acacias of the cemetery hung veils and webs of gossamer: everything around them was quiet as the dead folk who lay beneath their feet. And the people actively concerned went quietly to work, and those who could do nothing but watch stood around in silence.
“In all my long life of over ninety years,” whispered old Quarterpage, who had met them at the cemetery gates, looking fresh and brisk in spite of his shortened rest, “I have never seen this done before. It seems a strange, strange thing to interfere with a dead man’s last resting-place—a dreadful thing.”
“If there is a dead man there,” said Spargo.
He himself was mainly curious about the details of this exhumation; he had no scruples, sentimental or otherwise, about the breaking in upon the dead. He watched all that was done. The men employed by the local authorities, instructed over-night, had fenced in the grave with canvas; the proceedings were accordingly conducted in strict privacy; a man was posted to keep away any very early passersby, who might be attracted by the unusual proceedings. At first there was nothing to do but wait, and Spargo occupied himself by reflecting that every spadeful of earth thrown out of that grave was bringing him nearer to the truth; he had an unconquerable intuition that the truth of at any rate one phase of the Marbury case was going to be revealed to them. If the coffin to which they were digging down contained a body, and that the body of the stockbroker, Chamberlayne, then a good deal of his, Spargo’s, latest theory, would be dissolved to nothingness. But if that coffin contained no body at all, then—”
“They’re down to it!” whispered Breton.
Presently they all went and looked down into the grave. The workmen had uncovered the coffin preparatory to lifting it to the surface; one of them was brushing the earth away from the name-plate. And in the now strong light they could all read the lettering on it.