“Yes, sir,” the old fellow answered. “I’ve just been telling this ’ere gentleman. They were a funny lot, an’ I was glad to get rid of ’em out o’ my house.”
“Tell us all about them,” exclaimed Pink dismounting, tying his horse to a ring in the wall, and entering the house with us. It was a poor, neglected, old-fashioned place, not over-clean, for it appeared that both Hayes and his wife were very infirm and kept no woman-servant.
“Well, gentlemen, it happened just like this,” explained the decrepit old fellow, when we were in his stone-floored living room, with its great open hearth and big chimney corner. “One evening, back in last month, a gentleman called here. He’d walked a long way, and was very tired, so the missus, she gives ’im a mug o’ milk. He would insist on me ’avin a shillin’ for it, and then ’e sat here smoking ’is cigar—an’ a good un it wor. After we’d been talking some time and he got to know we were livin’ alone ’e asked whether we wouldn’t care to let four of our rooms to some friends of ’is up in London, who wanted to come and stay in a farm-’ouse for a month. What people wanted to come and stay in this ’ere place in preference to their own ’omes I couldn’t quite understand. Still, as ’e offered us five poun’ a week, I an’ the missus agreed. ’E stayed with us that night, ’ad a bit o’ supper, and went to bed. Next morning ’e went away, and in the afternoon ’e came back with one of his friends, a young man who was called Ben, while the older man they called Dick.”
“Dick what?” I inquired breathlessly.
“I don’t know. I never ’eered his other name.” Was it possible that the stranger who had walked so far was none other than Richard Keene? I inquired what day of August he had arrived.
“It wor the night of the sixteenth,” was old Hayes’s reply.
The very night of the tragedy in Sibberton Park! I asked him to describe the man known as Dick, but his description was somewhat hazy on account of his defective sight. Having, however, no doubt that the man who had arranged for apartments for the others was really the mysterious wayfarer, I allowed him to proceed with his highly-interesting narrative:
“The two stayed ’ere about a week, but ’ardly went out. I’d got some old fishin’ tackle, so they spent their time mostly down at the river yonder. They were very pleasant gentlemen, both on ’em, and at the end o’ the week they gave me a five-poun’ note. Then they went away sayin’ that their friends were comin’ soon to occupy the rooms. At the end o’ the next week there arrived, without any notice, a young lady—the one you saw last night, Doctor—the big man with a beard, named Logan, two other younger men, and an old woman-servant. The two men were foreigners, as well as the woman-servant, but Logan seemed to be head of the household, and the young lady was ’is daughter. At least ’e said so, but I don’t think they were related at all. Well, from the very first ’our they were in the ’ouse they puzzled me: Logan took me aside, and explained that he and his friends wanted perfect quiet, and they didn’t want a lot o’ gossipin’ about what they did, and where they went. He told me to open my mouth to nobody, and if he found I kept my own counsel he’d make me a present o’ an extra five poun’. They seemed to ’ave plenty o’ money,” remarked old Hayes in parenthesis:
“So it seems,” I observed. “Well, and what then?”
“Well, they occupied the four upstairs rooms, the two younger men occupying one room. They were thin-faced, dark-eyed fellows, whom I never liked at all, they seemed so sly and cunnin’, always whispering to themselves in their own language. If anybody chanced to come up ’ere I saw how alarmed they all were. That’s what first aroused my suspicions.”