The young man shook his head. “No, sir. Mr Strange has recently come to live here, about five months ago. He’s taken Forest View, an old-fashioned house a mile and a half away.”
“Curious,” remarked the amateur detective, in a voice of well-feigned surprise. “Really, how very easily one may be mistaken. I see Mr Emerson three or four times each week, and I could have sworn it was he.”
The ticket-collector smiled civilly, but made no reply. He was not interested in this sudden creation of Varney’s lively imagination.
The journalist crossed to the cycle shop and there hired a machine, paying down the usual deposit. He wheeled it until he met a small boy, from whom he inquired the whereabouts of Forest View.
He was on the right road, the boy informed him. The house with green iron gates lay on the left-hand side. His machine would take him there in a few minutes.
However, he did not mount it, as in that case he would quickly overtake Mr Strange, who was proceeding there on foot. He preferred that this gentleman should get there first, so as to give him an opportunity of having a good look round.
Twenty minutes’ easy walking brought him to the big iron gates of Forest View. He had seen the man disappear within, about a couple of hundred yards in front of him. There was not a soul in sight; he could reconnoitre at his leisure.
The house, old-fashioned, low and rather rambling, lay well back from the white high road, at right angles to it. A thick hedge led up to within a few feet of the entrance. It seemed to boast a fair piece of ground, at least three acres. The entrance to some rather dilapidated stabling was lower down the road.
He felt a sense of triumph. Smeaton, he knew, was still searching for Stent, and he, the amateur, had forestalled him. Was he right, after all, in his surmise that by some curious lapse the man of wider experience had left Farloe out of his calculations, and the man Stent was identical with the man Strange?
His survey finished, he mounted his machine, and rode along, thinking out his plans.