Sir Peter Warrendale was communicated with, and at once identified the box as his property, and explained the mystery of the false bottom, under which lay perdu a miniature of his great-grandmother when a beauty of eighteen.
The question that now put itself was by what means had the box come into Dare's possession? It was a question which only himself could answer. So a messenger was sent to his lodgings with a request that he would go to Bow Street and identify the box. But Dare was not there, and all the information his landlady could supply was that he had gone into the country and that the date of his return was uncertain.
Accordingly, a message was left requesting his presence at Bow Street immediately upon his return to town. Meanwhile the snuff-box remained in the hands of the authorities.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
IN QUEST OF THE MISSING HEIR.
Mr. Geoffrey Dare alighted from the London coach at Tuxford, a small market-town some half dozen miles from Uplands.
Next morning he set about making certain inquiries, which resulted in his ascertaining that Uplands was now empty and to let, and that Mrs. Bullivant had transferred herself and her belongings to a much smaller house, known as Homecroft, about twenty miles away on the other side of the country. The nearest town to Homecroft was Broxham, a place of some twelve thousand inhabitants, and thither Dare lost no time in betaking himself.
After breakfast next morning he hired a horse and started for a long ride. When he got back in the early evening he had learnt a good deal more about Homecroft than he knew when he set out. Whether the particulars thus gathered by him would prove of any after use it was too early to determine: in point of fact, he had not yet decided upon his course of action. The subject was one which needed careful consideration if a fiasco were to be avoided, and just then he was turning it over and over in his mind.
Next day was Broxham horse and cattle fair, and from early morn till late at night the little town was a busy scene in which business and pleasure were strangely commingled. Dare was a lover of horseflesh, and he found much to interest him in a casual way as he strolled idly about the fair, mentally chewing over the question of what his next step ought to be in the undertaking to which he had bound himself.
In those days even more than now a horse fair acted as a sure magnet for bringing together a small crowd of gypsies, and certainly there was no lack of them on this occasion at Broxham.