St. George set to work. Making inquiries here, there, and everywhere for William Brook, personally and by advertising. But little came of it. A porter at the Worcester railway-station, who had seen the traveller talking with St. George on the platform, came forward to state that they (the gentleman and Mr. St. George) had left the station together, walking away from it side by side, down the road. St. George utterly denied this. He admitted that the other might have followed him so closely as to impart a possible appearance of their being together, but if so, he was not conscious of it. Just as he had denied shaking hands with the stranger, which Mrs. James Ashton insisted upon.
Next a lady came forward. She had travelled from Birmingham that afternoon, the 19th of October, with her little nephew and niece. In the same compartment, a first-class one, was another passenger, bearing, both in attire and person, the description told of—a very pleasant, gentlemanly young man, nice-looking, eyes dark blue. It was bitterly cold: he seemed to feel it greatly, and said he had recently come from a warmer climate. He also said that he ought to have got into Worcester by an earlier train, but had been detained in Birmingham, through missing his luggage, which he supposed must have been put out by mistake at some intermediate station. He had with him a small black hand-bag; nothing else that she saw. His great-coat was of a peculiar shade of grey; it did not look like an English-made coat: his well-fitting kid gloves were of fawn (or tan) colour, and appeared to be new. Once, when the high wind seemed to shake the carriage, he remarked with a smile that one might almost as well be at sea; upon which her little nephew said: “Have you ever been to sea, sir?” “Yes, my little lad,” he answered; “I landed from it only yesterday.”
The only other person to come forward was a farmer named Lockett, well known to us all. He lived on the Evesham Road, close upon the turning, or by-way, which led up from Dip Lane. On the night of the storm, the 19th of October, he went out about ten o’clock to visit a neighbour, who had met with a bad accident. In passing by this turning, a man came out of it, walking pretty sharply. He looked like a gentleman, seemed to be muffled up round the neck, and carried something in his hand; whether a black bag, or not, Mr. Lockett did not observe. “A wild night,” said the farmer to him in salutation. “It is that,” answered the other. He took the road to Evesham, and Mr. Lockett saw him no more.
St. George was delighted at this evidence. He could have hugged old Lockett. “I knew that the truth would be corroborated sooner or later,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “That was the man I put out of my gig in Dip Lane.”
“Stop a bit,” cried Mr. Delorane, a doubt striking him. “If it was the same man, what had he been doing to take two or three hours to get into the Evesham Road? Did he bear any resemblance to William Brook, Lockett?—you would have known Brook.”
“None at all that I saw. As to knowing Brook, or any one else, I can’t answer for it on such a night as that,” added the farmer after a pause. “Brook would have known me, though, I take it, daylight or dark, seeing me close to my own place, and all.”
“It was the other man,” affirmed St. George exultantly, “and now we will find him.”
An advertisement was next inserted in the local newspapers by Mr. St. George, and also in the Times.
“Gentleman Wanted. The traveller who got out of the Birmingham train at Worcester railway-station on the 19th of last October, towards the close of the afternoon, and who spoke to a gentleman on the platform respecting the trains to Evesham and to Cheltenham, and who was subsequently overtaken a little way out of Worcester by the same gentleman and given a few miles’ lift in his gig, and was put down in a cross-country lane to continue his walk to Evesham: this traveller is earnestly requested to give an address where he may be communicated with, to Alfred St. George, Esquire, Timberdale, Worcester. By doing so, he will be conferring a great favour.”
For two long weeks the advertisements brought forth no reply. At the end of that time there came to Mr. St. George a post-letter, short and sweet.