The Missing Bank Manager

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 146, 10 September 1927, Page 27 (Supplement)

The Missing Bank Manager

SERIAL

STORV

By .

J. S. FLETCHER

CHAPTER XIV. (Continued) Anyway, rightly or wrongly, Starmiilge was suspicious of the junior partner in Chestermarke's Bank, and he wanted to know everything that he could find out about him. He had already learnt that Joseph, like his uncle, was a confirmed bachelor and lived in an old house at the corner of Commarket, somewhat —so far as the townsfolk could judge—after the fashion of a hermit. Starmidge would have given a. good deal for a really good excuse to call on Joseph Ches termarke at that house, so that he might see the inside of it; indeed, if he had • >nlv met with a better reception at the bank he would have invented such an excuse, liut if Gabriel was icily standoffish. Joseph was openly sneering and contemptuous and tlie detective knew that no excuse would gain him admittance. Still there was the outside; he would take a look at that. Starmidge was a young man of ideas as well as of ability, and without exactly shaping his thought in so many words, he felt —vaguely, perhaps, but none the less strongly—that just as you can size up some, men by the clothes they wear, so you can get an idea of others by the outer look of the houses which shelter them.

Cominariet in Scarnham lay at the further enc. of the street called FinkleWay. It was a queer. open space, which sloped downhill from the centre of the ridge on which the middle of the town was built to the valley through which the little river meandered. Save where the streets, and the road leading out to tlje open country and Ellersdeane, cut into it, it was completely enclosed by old houses of the sort which Starmidge had already admired in the Market Place; many of them half-timbered, all of them very ancient. One or two of them were inns; some were evidently workmen’s cottages; others were better-class dwelling-houses. From the description already furnished to him by Polke, Starmidge at once recognised Joseph Chestermai ke’s abode. It was a corner house, abutting on the road which ran nut at the lower angle of this irregular space and led down to the river and Scarnham Bridge. It was by far the biggest house thereabouts —a tall, slender, stone-built house of many stories, towering high above any of the surrounding gables. And, save for a very faint, dull glow which shone through the transom window of the front door, there was not a vestige of light in a 'ingle window of the seven stories. Cornmarket was a gloomy, cavernous place, thought Starmidge, hut the little oil lamps in the cottages were riotously cheery in comparison with the darkness of the tall, gaunt Chestermarke nansion. It looked like the abode of dead men. Starmidge lenged to knock at that door—if only to get a peep inside the kail. But lie curbed his desires and went quickly round the corner of the house. There was a high, blank wall there which led down to the grassy bank of the 1 : ver. From its corner another wall I.n along the riverside, separated from the stream by a path. There was a door set in this wall, and Starmidge, after carefully looking round in the gloom, quietly tried it and found it securely locked. An intense desire to see the inside of Joseph Chestermarke’s garden seized the detective. Near the door, partly overhanging the garden wall, Partly overshadowing the path and tho river bank, was a tree. Starmidge. after listening carefully and deciding that no one was coming along the Path, made sl ift to climb that tree. Just then bursting into full leaf. In an »ther minute ho was among its middle branches. and peering inquisitively into the garden which lay be ween him and the gaunt outline of Iho gloom-stricken house.

The moon was just then rising above the roofs and gables of the town and by its rapidly increasing light Starmidge saw that the garden was of considerable size, running back quite sixty yards from the rear of the house and having a corresponding breadth. Like all the gardens which stretched from the backs of the Market Place houses to the river bank, it was rich in trees—high elms and beeches rose from its lawns and made deep shadows across thegi. But Starmidge was not so much interested in those trees, fine as they were, as in a building, obviously modern, which was set in their midst, completely isolated. That it was a comparatively new building lie could see; the moonbeams falling full on it showed that the stone of which it was built was fresh and unstained by time or smoke. But what was it” Of what nature, for what purpose? It was

neither stable, nor coach-house, nor summer-house, nor a_ grouping of domestic offices. No drive or path led to it: it was built In the middle of a grass plot; round it ran a stone-lined trench. Its architecture was plain but handsome; it possessed two distinctive features which the detective was quick to notice. One was that at any late on the two sides which he could see—its windows were set at a reight ot quite 12ft. from the ground; the other that from its flat, parapetted roof rose a conical structure something like the rounded stacks of glass foundries and potteries. This was obviously a chimney and from its mouth at that moment was emerging a slight column of smoke which threw back curiouslycoloured reflections, blue, and yellow, and red. to the moonlight which fell on its thickening spirals.

Starmidge felt just as much desire to get inside this queer structure as into the house behind it, and if he could have seen any prospect of taking a peep through its windows he would have risked detection and dropped from his perch into the garden. But he judged that if the windows were 12ft from the ground .on the two sides of the building which he could see, they would be the same height on the sides which he couldn’t see; moreover, he observed that they were obscured by either dull red glass or red curtains. Clearly no outsider was intended to get a peep into this temple of mystery. What was it? What went on within it? He was about to climb down from the tree when he got some sort of an answer to these questions. From within the building, muffled by the. evidently thick walls, came the faintest sound of metal beating on metal —a mere rippling, tinkling sound, light and-musical, such as might have been made by fairy blacksmiths, beating on a fairy anvil. But Ear away as it sounded,. it was clear and unmistakeable. Starmidge regained the path between the wall and the river and went slowly forward. That place, he decided, was evidently some sort of a workshop, m which was a forge; probably Mr. Joseph Chestermarke amused himself with a little amateur work in metals. He thought no more of the matter just then; he wanted to explore the river bank along which he now walked. For

according to the story of the landlady of the Station Hotel, it was on that river bank that the mysterious stranger was to meet whoever it was that he spoke to over the telephone, and so far Starmidge had not had an opportunity of examining its geography.

There was not much to examine. The river, a mere ditch, eight or ten in breadth, wandered through a level mead at the base of the valley: separated from the gardens by a wide path. Between Scarnham Bridge, at the foot of Cornmarket and the corner of Joseph Chestermarke’s big garden, and the end of Cordmaker’s Alley, a narrow street which ran down from the further end of the Market Place to the riverside, there were no featl ures of any note or interest. On the other side of the river lay the deep [woods tkrqugh which Neale and Betty

Fosdyke had passed on their way to Ellersdeane Hollow. Starmidge had heard all about that expedition, and lie glanced curiously at the black depths of the trees, wondering if John Horbury and the mysterious stranger, supposing they had met, had turned into those woods to hold their conference. He presently came to the foot-bridge by which access to the woods and the other bank of the river was gained, and by it he lingered for a moment or two, looking at it in its bearings to the bank-house garden and orchard on his left hand, and to the Station Hotel, the lights of which he could plainly see down the valley. Certainly, if John Horbury and the stranger decided to meet in secret, here was the place. The stranger had nothing to do but stroll along the river-bank from the hotel; Horbury had only to step out of his orchard and meet him. Once together, they had only to cross that footbridge into the woods to be immediately in surroundings of great privacy. Starmidge turned up Cordmaker’s Alley, regained the Market Place, and strolled on to Polke’s private house. The superintendent was taking his ease after his day’s labours, and reading the Ecclesborough evening newspapers; he tossed one of them over to his visitor. “All there!” he said, pointing to some big headlines. “Got it all in, just as you told it to Parkinson. Full justice to the descriptions of both Horbury and the Station Hotel stranger. Smart work, eh ?” “Power of the Press—as Parkinson said,” answered Starmidge, with a •laugh. “It’s very useful, the Press; I don’t know how they managed without in in the old days of criminalcatching, Mr. Polke. Press and telegraph, eh?—they’re valuable adjuncts.” “You think all that would be in the London papers this evening?” asked Polke. “Sure to be,” replied Starmidge. “I’m hoping we’ll hear something from London to-morrow. I say—l’ve been taking a bit of a look round one or two places to-night, quietly, you know. What’s that curious building in Joseph Chestermarke’s garden?” Polke put down his paper and looked unusually interested. “I don’t know!” he answered. “How did you see it? I’ve never seen inside his garden.” “Climbed a tree on the river bank and looked over the wall,” replied Starmidge. “Well,” said Polke. “1 did hear, some few years ago, that he was building something in that garden but' the work was done by Ecclesborough contractors, and nobody ever knew much about it here. I believe Joseph’s a. bit of an amateur experimenter—but I don’t know what he experiments in.

Nobody ever, goes inside his house — he’s a hermit.”

“He’s got some sort of a forge there, anyhow,” said Starmidge. “Or a furnace, or something of that sort.” Then they talked of other things

until half-past ten, when the detective retired to his inn and w;erit to bed. He was sleeping soundly when a steady knocking at his door roused him, to hear the voice of his landlady outside.

And at the same time he heard the big clock of the parish church striking midnight. “Mr. Starmidge!” said the voice. “There’s a policeman wanting you. Will you go round at once to Mr. Polke’s? There’s a man come from London about that piece in the newspapers.” (To be continued)