“That fellow, Hart, is no fool,” went on Winter rapidly. “He said last night ‘How does one get evidence?’ It was not easy to answer. Siddle has gone to his mother’s funeral. What do you think!”
“You’d turn me into a housebreaker, would you?” whined Furneaux bitterly. “I must do the job, of course, just because I’m a little one. Well, well! After a long and honorable career I have to become a sneak thief. It may cost me my pension.”
“There’s no real difficulty. An orchard—”
“Bet you a new hat I went over the ground before you did.”
“Get over it quickly now, and get something out of it, and I’ll give you a new hat. Got any tools?”
“I fetched ’em from town Tuesday morning,” chortled Furneaux. “So now who’s the brainy one?”
He skipped into the hotel, while Winter went to the station to make sure of Siddle’s departure and destination. Yes, the chemist had taken a return ticket to Epsom, where a strip of dank meadow-land on the road to Esher marks the last resting-place of many of London’s epileptics. On returning to the high-street, Winter lighted a cigar, a somewhat common occurrence in his everyday life, where-upon Furneaux walked swiftly up the hill. A farmer, living near the center of the village, owned a rather showy cob. Winter found the man, and persuaded him to trot the animal to and fro in front of the hotel. There was a good deal of noise and hoof-clattering, and people came to their doors to see what was going on. Obviously, if they were watching the antics of a skittish two-year-old in the high-street, their eyes were blind to proceedings in the back premises. Even the postmaster and his daughter were interested onlookers, and a policeman, who might have put a summary end to the display, vanished as though by magic.
Luckily, Winter was a good judge of a horse. When the cob was stabled, and the farmer came to the inn to have a drink, he was forced to admit a tendency to cow hocks, which, it would seem, is held a fatal blemish in the Argentine.
Meanwhile, Furneaux had dodged into a lane and thence to a bridle-path which emerged near Bob Smith’s forge. When he had traversed, roughly speaking, one-half of a rectangle in which the Hare and Hounds occupied the center of one of the longer sides, he climbed a gate and followed a hedge. Though not losing a second, he took every precaution to remain unseen, and, to the best of his belief, gained an inclosed yard at the back of Siddle’s premises without having attracted attention. He slipped the catch of a kitchen window only to discover that the sash was fastened by screws also. The lock of the kitchen door yielded to persuasion, but there were bolts above and below. A wire screen in a larder window was impregnable. Short of cutting out a pane of glass, he could not effect an entry on the ground floor.
Nimble as a squirrel, and risking everything, he climbed to the roof of an outhouse, and tried a bedroom window. Here he succeeded. When the catch was forced, there were no further obstacles. In he went, pausing only to look around and see if any curious or alarmed eye was watching him. He wondered why every back yard on that side of the high-street was empty, not even a maid-servant or woman washing clothes being in sight, but understood and grinned when the commotion Winter was creating came in view from a front room.