They met again at the appointed hour and cycled along as far as Cliff Farm, where they put up their bicycles. Then they walked up the hill from the farm. At the end of the cutting, they saw Crewe’s big white car, stationary, and Crewe and Marsland standing on the greensward smoking cigars. The two police officers advanced to meet them.
“It’s a bit of very bad luck about this girl disappearing, Mr. Crewe,” said Gillett. “What do you make of it? Westaway thinks she may have gone to stay with friends at Staveley, and that her departure at this juncture is merely a coincidence.”
“Miss Maynard would not pay a visit to friends by the last train at night,” said Crewe.
“Then somebody warned her that the game was up and that safety lay in flight.”
“I’m afraid that’s the only reasonable explanation for her disappearance,” replied Crewe. “But who warned her?”
“That’s the point!” exclaimed Gillett. “I have been thinking it over ever since I discovered she had gone, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it must have been that infernal little dwarf or her husband, though what is their object is by no means clear. Who else could it have been? The only other people who know that I intended to unmask her are yourself, Westaway and Mr. Marsland. By a process of elimination suspicion points to the Granges.”
Crewe did not reply. While Gillett was speaking a flash of that inspiration which occasionally came to him when he was groping in the dark for light revealed to him the key by which the jigsaw of clues, incidents, hints, suspicions, and evidence in the Cliff Farm murder could be pieced together. But the problem was one of extraordinary intricacy, and he needed time to see if all the pieces would fit into the pattern.
It was at Detective Gillett’s suggestion that they walked up to the top of the hill, to the headland where Marsland’s horse had taken fright on the night of the storm.
He took Crewe’s arm and walked ahead with him, leaving the sergeant to follow with Marsland. As they went along, he unconsciously revealed the extent of his dependence on Crewe’s stronger intelligence by laying before him the remaining difficulties regarding the case. His chief concern was lest Miss Maynard should warn Brett in time to enable him to slip through the net which had been woven for him. To Crewe’s inquiry whether the London police had come across any trace of him he shook his head.
“No, he is lying low, wherever he is. My own belief is that he has not gone to London, but that he is hidden somewhere in the Staveley district. I shall look for him here, and Scotland Yard is watching his London haunts. He’s a pretty bad egg, you know. We’ve a record of him at Scotland Yard.”