In the Mayor's Parlour

"To be sure!" answered Brent. "But when—where?"

"I go into the Castle grounds every afternoon," she answered timidly. "Could—could you come there—some time?"

"To-morrow afternoon?" suggested Brent. "Say three o'clock? Would that do?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Thank you—I'll be there. It seems—queer, but I'll tell you. Thank you again—you'll understand to-morrow."

She had her hand on the big street door by then. Without more words she let him out into the night; he heard the door close heavily behind him. He went back towards the heart of the little town, wondering. Only a few hours before, he had been in the rush and bustle of Fleet Street, and now, here he was, two hundred miles away, out of the world, and faced with an atmosphere of murder and mystery.

CHAPTER IV

"You can bet your life 'at this job's been done by them whose little game Wallingford were going to checkmate!" declared one man. "I've allus said 'at he were running a rare old risk. We know what t' old saying is about new brooms sweeping clean—all very well, is that, but ye can smash a new broom if ye use it over vigorously. Wallingford were going a bit too deeply into t' abuses o' this town—an' he's paid t' penalty. Put out o' t' way—that's t' truth on it!"

"Happen it may be," said a second man. "And happen not. There's no denying 'at t' Mayor were what they call a man o' mystery. A mysterious chap, d'ye see, in his comings and goings. Ye don't know 'at he mayn't ha' had secret enemies; after all, he were nowt but a stranger i' t' town—nobbut been here twelve year or so. How do we know owt about him? It may be summat to do wi' t' past, this here affair. I'm none going t' believe 'at there's anybody i' Hathelsborough 'ud stick a knife into him just because he were cleaning up t' town money affairs, like."

"Never ye mind!" asserted the former speaker. "He were going to touch t' pockets o' some on 'em, pretty considerable, were t' Mayor. And ye know what Hathelsborough folk is when their pockets is touched—they'll stick at nowt! He's been put away, has Wallingford, 'cause he were interfering over much."

Brent walked on, reflecting. His own opinions coincided, uncomfortably but decidedly, with those of the last speaker, and a rapidly-growing feeling of indignation and desire for vengeance welled up within him. He looked round at the dark-walled, closely shuttered old houses about him with a sense of dull anger—surely they were typical of the reserve, the cunning watchfulness, the suggestive silences of the folk who lived in them, of whom he had just left three excellent specimens in Crood, Mallett and Coppinger. How was he, a stranger, going to unearth the truth about his cousin's brutal murder, amongst people like these, endowed, it seemed to him, with an Eastern-like quality of secretiveness? But he would!

He went on to the rooms in which Wallingford had lived ever since his first coming to the town. They were good, roomy, old-fashioned apartments in a big house, cosy and comfortable, but the sight of Wallingford's study, of his desk, his books and papers, of his favourite chair and his slippers at the fire, of the supper-table already spread for him and Brent in an inner parlour, turned Brent sick at heart. He turned hastily to Wallingford's landlady, who had let him in and followed him into the dead man's room.

"It's no use, Mrs. Appleyard," he said. "I can't stop here to-night, anyway. It would be too much! I'll go to the Chancellor, and send on for my luggage."

The woman nodded, staring at him wonderingly. The news had evidently wrought a curious change in her; usually, she was a cheery, good-natured, rather garrulous woman, but she looked at Brent now as if something had dazed her.

"Mr. Brent," she whispered, in awe-stricken accents, "you could have knocked me down with a feather when they came here and told me. He was that well—and cheerful—when he went out!"

"Yes," said Brent dully. "Yes." He let his eyes run over the room again—he had looked forward to having a long, intimate chat with Wallingford that night over the bright fire, still crackling and glowing in readiness for host and guest. "Ay, well!" he added. "It's done now!"

"Them police fellows, Mr. Brent," said the landlady, "have they any idea who did it?"

"I don't think they've the least idea yet," replied Brent. "I suppose you haven't, either?"

Mrs. Appleyard, thus spurred to reminiscence, recovered something of her customary loquaciousness.

"No, to be sure I haven't," she answered. "But I've heard things, and I wish—eh, I do wish!—that I'd warned him! I ought to ha' done."

"What about?" asked Brent. "And what things?"

The landlady hesitated a little, shaking her head.

"Well, you know, Mr. Brent," she said at last, "in a little town like this, folk will talk—Hathelsborough's a particular bad place for talk and gossip; for all that, Hathelsborough people's as secret as the grave when they like, about their own affairs. And, as I say, I've heard things. There's a woman comes here to work for me at odd times, a woman that sometimes goes to put in a day or two at Marriner's Laundry, where a lot of women works, and I recollect her telling me not so long since that there was talk amongst those women about the Mayor and his interfering with things, and she'd heard some of 'em remark that he'd best keep his fingers out o' the pie or he'd pay for it. No more, Mr. Brent; but a straw'll show which way the wind blows. I'm sure there was them in the town that wanted to get rid of him. All the same—murder!"

"Just so," said Brent. "Well, I've got to find it all out."

He went away to the Chancellor Hotel, made his arrangements, sent to Mrs. Appleyard's for his luggage, and eventually turned into bed.

But it was little sleep that Brent got that night, and he was thankful when morning came and he could leave his bed and find relief in activity. He was out and about while the grey mists still hung around the Hathelsborough elms, and at eight o'clock walked into the police-station, anxious for news.

Hawthwaite had no news for him. Late the previous night, and early that morning, the police had carried out an exhaustive search of the old Moot Hall, and had failed to discover anything that seemed to bear relation to the crime. Also they had made themselves acquainted with the murdered man's movements immediately previous to his arrival at the Moot Hall; there was nothing whatever in them that afforded any clue.

"We know all that he did from five o'clock yesterday afternoon to the time you found him, Mr. Brent," said Hawthwaite. "He left his office at five o'clock, and went home to his rooms. He was there till nearly seven o'clock. He went out then and walked round by Abbey Lodge, where he left some books—novels, or something of the sort—for Mrs. Saumarez. Then——"

"Who's Mrs. Saumarez?" asked Brent.

"She's a young widow lady, very wealthy, it's understood, who came to live in the town some two years ago," replied Hawthwaite. "Very handsome young woman—you'll be seeing her. Between you and me," he added, with a knowing glance, "his Worship—late Worship, I should say—had been showing her great attention, and I don't think she was indifferent to him—he used to go and dine with her a good deal anyway. However, that's neither here nor there, just now. He called, I say, at Abbey Lodge, left these books, and then came on to the Moot Hall, as Bunning said. That's the plain truth about his movements."

"I don't think his movements matter," observed Brent. "What does matter is—what were the movements of the murderer, and how did he get into the Mayor's Parlour? Or was he concealed there when my cousin entered and, if so, how did he get out and away?"

"Ay, just so, Mr. Brent," agreed Hawthwaite. "As to that, we know nothing—so far. But it was of importance to find out about your cousin's own movements, because, you see, he might have been seen, for instance, in conversation with some stranger, or—or something of that sort, and it all helps."

"You don't know anything about the presence of any strangers in the town last night?" inquired Brent.

"Oh, we've satisfied ourselves about that," replied Hawthwaite. "We made full inquiries last night at the railway station and at the hotels. There were no strangers came into the town last night, or evening, or afternoon, barring yourself and a couple of commercial travellers who are well known here. We saw to that particular at once."

"Then you've really found out—nothing?" suggested Brent.

"Nothing!" asserted Hawthwaite. "But the inquest won't be held until to-morrow morning, and by then we may know something. And, in the meantime, there's something you might do, Mr. Brent—I gather that you're his next-of-kin? Very well, sir, then you might examine his papers—private papers and so on. You never know what bit of sidelight you might come upon."

"Very good," said Brent. "But I shall want help—large help—in that. Can you recommend a solicitor, now?"

"There's Mr. Tansley," replied Hawthwaite. "His office is next door to his late Worship's—a sound man, Tansley, Mr. Brent. And, if I were you, I should get Tansley to represent you at the inquest to-morrow—legal assistance is a good thing to have, sir, at an affair of that sort."

Brent nodded his acquiescence and went back to his hotel. He was thankful that there were few guests in the house—he had no wish to be stared at as a principal actor in the unfolding drama. Yet he speedily realized that he had better lay aside all squeamish feelings of that sort; he foresaw that the murder of its Mayor would throw Hathelsborough into the fever of a nine-days' wonder, and that his own activities would perforce draw attention to himself. And there were things to be done, and after he had breakfasted he set resolutely and systematically about doing them. Tansley's office first—he made an arrangement with Tansley to meet him at Wallingford's rooms that afternoon, to go through any private papers that might be found there. Then his cousin's office—there were clerks there awaiting instructions. Brent had to consult with them as to what was to be done about business. And that over, there was another and still more difficult task—the arrangements for Wallingford's interment. Of one thing Brent was determined—whatever Alderman Crood, as Deputy-Mayor, or whatever the Aldermen and Councillors of Hathelsborough desired, he, as the murdered man's next-of-kin, was not going to have any public funeral or demonstration; it roused his anger to white heat to think of even the bare possibility of Wallingford's murderer following him in smug hypocrisy to his grave. And in Brent's decided opinion that murderer was a Hathelsborough man, and one of high place.

It was nearly noon when he had completed these arrangements, and then, having no more to do at the moment, he remembered the little newspaper man, Peppermore, and his invitation to call at the Monitor office. So, as twelve o'clock chimed and struck from the tower of St. Hathelswide, he walked up the narrow entry from the market-place, along which the editor-reporter had shot the previous night, and, after a preliminary reconnoitring of the premises, tapped at a door marked "Editorial." A shrill voice bade him enter, and he turned the handle to find himself inspecting an unusually untidy and littered room, the atmosphere of which seemed chiefly to be derived from a mixture of gas, paste and printers' ink. Somewhere beyond sounded the monotonous rumble of what was probably an old-fashioned printing machine.

A small-figured, sharp-faced, red-haired youngster of apparently fifteen or sixteen years was the sole occupant of this unsavoury sanctum. He was very busy—so busy that he had divested himself of his jacket, and had rolled up his shirt-sleeves. In his right hand he wielded a pair of scissors; with them he was industriously clipping paragraphs from a pile of newspapers which lay before him on a side-table. It was evident that he had a sharp eye for telling stuff, for in the moment which elapsed after Brent's entrance he had run it over a column, swooped on a likely item, snipped it out and added it to a heap of similar gleanings at his elbow. He glanced at his caller with an expression which was of the sort that discourages wasting of time.

"Mr. Peppermore?" inquired Brent, taking his cue. "In?"

"Out," answered the boy.

"Long?" demanded Brent.

"Can't say," said the busy one. "Might be and mightn't." Then he gave Brent a close inspection. "If it's news," he added, "I can take it. Is it?"

"No news," replied Brent. "Mr. Peppermore asked me to call. I'll wait." He perched himself on the counter, and watched the scissors. "You're the sub-editor, I reckon?" he said at last with a smile. "Eh?"

"I'm all sorts of things in this blooming office," answered the boy. "We're short-handed here, I can tell you! Takes me and Mr. P. all our time to get the paper out. Why, last week, Mr. P. he didn't have time to write his Editorial! We had to shove an old one in. But lor' bless you, I don't believe anybody reads 'em! Liveliness, and something about turnips—that's what our folks likes. However, they'll have some good stuff this week. We'd a real first-class murder in this town last night. The Mayor! Heard about it?"

"I've heard," said Brent. "Um! And how long have you been at that job?"

"Twelve months," replied the boy. "I was in the law before that—six months. But the law didn't suit me. Slow! There's some go in this—bit too much now and then. What we want is another reporter. Comes hard on me and Mr. Peppermore, times. I did two cricket matches, a fire, a lost child, and a drowning case last Saturday."

"Good!" said Brent. "Know any shorthand?"

"I can do a fair bit," answered the man-of-all-work. "Learning. Can you?"

"Some," replied Brent. "Did a lot—once. What system?"

But just then Peppermore, more in a hurry than ever, came bustling in, to beam brightly through his spectacles at sight of his visitor.

"Mr. Brent!" he exclaimed. "Delighted, my dear sir, charmed! Not often our humble roof is extended over a distinguished visitor. Take a chair, sir—but no! stop! I've an idea." He seized Brent by the lapel of his coat and became whispering and mysterious. "Step outside," he said. "Twelve o'clock—we'll go over to Bull's."

"What's Bull's?" asked Brent, as they went out into the entry.

Peppermore laughed and wagged his finger.

"Bull's, sir?" he said. "Bull's?—centre of all the gossip in Hathelsborough. Come across there and have a quiet glass with me, and keep your eyes and ears open. I've been trying all the morning to get some news, ideas, impressions, about the sad event of last night, Mr. Brent—now, for current criticism, Bull's is the place. All the gossips of the town congregate there, sir."

"All right," agreed Brent. "Show the way!"

Peppermore led him down the narrow entry, across the market-place, and into an equally narrow passage that opened between two shops near High Cross. There Brent found himself confronted by what seemed to be a high, blank, doorless and windowless wall; Peppermore perceived his astonishment and laughed.

"Some queer, odd nooks and corners in Hathelsborough, Mr. Brent!" he said knowingly. "It would take a stranger a long time to find out all the twists and turns in this old town. But everybody knows the way to Bull's Snug—and here we are!"

He suddenly made a sharp turn to the right and into another passage, where he pushed open a door, steered his companion by the elbow through a dark entry, and thrusting aside a heavy curtain ushered him into as queer a place as Brent had ever seen. It was a big, roomy apartment, lavishly ornamented with old sporting prints and trophies of the rustic chase; its light came from the top through a skylight of coloured glass; its floor was sawdusted; there were shadowy nooks and recesses in it, and on one side ran a bar, presided over by two hefty men in their shirt-sleeves. And here, about the bar, and in knots up and down the room and at the little tables in the corners, was a noontide assemblage, every man with a glass in his hand or at his elbow. Peppermore drew Brent into a vacant alcove and gave him a significant glance.

"I guess there isn't a man in this room, Mr. Brent, that hasn't got his own theory about what happened last night," he murmured. "I don't suppose any of 'em know you—they're not the sort of men you'd meet when you were here before—these are all chiefly tradesmen, betting men, sportsmen, and so on. But as I say, if you want the gossip of the town, here's the place! There never was a rumour in Hathelsborough but it was known and canvassed and debated and improved upon in Bull's, within an hour. Every scandalmonger and talebearer comes here—and here's," he continued, suddenly dropping his voice to a whisper, "one of the biggest of 'em—watch him, and listen to him, if he comes near us. That tall, thin man, in the grey suit, the man with the grizzled moustache. Listen, Mr. Brent; I'll tell you who that chap is, for he's one of the queerest and at the same time most interesting characters in the town. That, sir, is Krevin Crood, the ne'er-do-weel brother of Mr. Alderman Crood—watch him!"

CHAPTER V

He winked significantly as he glanced across the room, and Brent knew what he meant. Krevin Crood, lofty and even haughty in manner as he was, had lounged near the bar and stood looking around him, nodding here and there as he met the eye of an acquaintance.

"Waiting till somebody asks him to drink," muttered Peppermore. "Regular sponge, he is! And once used to crack his bottle of champagne with the best!"

"What's the story?" asked Brent, still quietly watching the subject of Peppermore's remarks.

"Oh, the old one," said Peppermore. "Krevin Crood was once a solicitor, and Town Clerk, and, as I say, the biggest swell in the place. Making his couple of thousand a year, I should think. Come down in the usual fashion—drink, gambling, extravagance and so on. And in the end they had to get rid of him—as Magistrates' Clerk, I mean: it was impossible to keep him on any longer. He'd frittered away his solicitor's practice too by that time, and come to the end of his resources. But Simon was already a powerful man in the town, so they—he and some others—cooked things nicely for Krevin. Krevin Crood, Mr. Brent, is one of the Hathelsborough abuses that your poor cousin meant to rid the ratepayers of—fact, sir!"

"How?" asked Brent.

"Well," continued Peppermore, "I said that Simon and some others cooked things for him. Instead of dismissing Krevin for incompetence and inattention to his duties, they retired him—with a pension. Krevin Crood, sir, draws a hundred and fifty-six pounds a year out of the revenues of this rotten little borough—all because he's Simon's brother. Been drawing that—three pounds a week—for fifteen years now. It's a scandal! However, as I say, he once had two thousand a year."

"A difference," remarked Brent.

"Ay, well, he adds a bit to his three pound," said Peppermore. "He does odd jobs for people. For one thing, he carries out all Dr. Wellesley's medicines for him. And he shows strangers round the place—he knows all about the history and antiquities of the Castle, St. Hathelswide, and St. Laurence, and the Moot Hall, and so on. A hanger-on, and a sponge—that's what he is, Mr. Brent. But clever—as clever, sir, as he's unprincipled."

"The Croods seem to be an interesting family," observed Brent. "Who is that girl that I saw last night—the Alderman's niece? Is she, by any chance, this chap's daughter?"

"Queenie," said Peppermore. "Pretty girl too, that, Mr. Brent. No, sir; she's this chap's niece, and Simon's. She's the daughter of another Crood. Ben Crood. Ben's dead—he never made anything out, either—died, I believe, as poor as a church mouse. Simon's the moneyed man of the Crood family—the old rascal rolls in brass, as they call it here. So he took Queenie out of charity, and I'll bet my Sunday hat that he gets out of her the full equivalent of all that he gives her! Catch him giving anything for nothing!"

"You don't love Alderman Crood?" suggested Brent.

Peppermore picked up his glass of bitter ale and drank off what remained. He set down the glass with a bang.

"Wouldn't trust him any farther than I could throw his big carcase!" he said with decision. "Nor any more than I would Krevin there—bad 'uns, both of 'em. But hullo! as nobody's come forward this morning, Krevin's treating himself to a drink! That's his way—he'll get his drink for nothing, if he can, but, if he can't, he's always got money. Old cadger!"

Brent was watching Krevin Crood. As Peppermore had just said, nobody had joined Krevin at the bar. And now he was superintending the mixing of a drink which one of the shirt-sleeved barmen was preparing for him. Presently, glass in hand, he drew near a little knot of men, who, in the centre of the room, were gossiping in whispers. One of the men turned on him.

"Well, and what's Sir Oracle got to say about it?" he demanded, with something like a covert sneer. "You'll know all about it, Krevin, I reckon! What's your opinion?"

Krevin Crood looked over the speaker with a quiet glance of conscious superiority. However much he might have come down in the world, he still retained the manners of a well-bred and educated man, and Brent was not surprised to hear a refined and cultured accent when he presently spoke.

"If you are referring to the unfortunate and lamentable occurrence of last night, Mr. Spelliker," he answered, "I prefer to express no opinion. The matter is sub judice."

"Latin!" sneered the questioner. "Ay! you can hide a deal o' truth away behind Latin, you old limbs o' the law! But I reckon the truth'll come out, all the same."

"It is not a legal maxim, but a sound old English saying that murder will out," remarked Krevin quietly. "I think you may take it, Mr. Spelliker, that in this case, as in most others, the truth will be arrived at."

"Ay, well, if all accounts be true, it's a good job for such as you that the Mayor is removed," said Spelliker half-insolently. "They say he was going to be down on all you pensioned gentlemen—what?"

"That, again, is a matter which I do not care to discuss," replied Krevin. He turned away, approaching a horsy-looking individual who stood near. "Good-morning, Mr. Gates," he said pleasantly. "Got rid of your brown cob yet? If not, I was talking to Simpson, the vet, yesterday—I rather fancy you'd find a customer in him."

Peppermore nudged his companion's arm. Brent leaned nearer to him.

"Not get any change out of him!" whispered Peppermore. "Cool old customer, isn't he? Sub judice, eh? Good! And yet—if there's a man in all Hathelsborough that's likely to know what straws are sailing on the undercurrent, Mr. Brent, Krevin Crood's the man! But you'll come across him before you're here long—nobody can be long in Hathelsborough without knowing Krevin!"

They left Bull's then, and after a little talk in the market-place about the matter of paramount importance Brent returned to the Chancellor, thinking about what he had just seen and heard. It seemed to him, now more assuredly than ever, that he was in the midst of a peculiarly difficult maze, in a network of chicanery and deceit, in an underground burrow full of twistings and turnings that led he could not tell whither. An idea had flashed through his mind as he looked at Krevin Crood in the broken man's brief interchange of remarks with the half-insolent tradesman: an idea which he had been careful not to mention to Peppermore. Krevin Crood, said Peppermore, was mainly dependent on his pension of three pounds a week from the borough authorities—a pension which, of course, was terminable at the pleasure of those authorities; Wallingford had let it be known, plainly and unmistakably, that he was going to advocate the discontinuance of these drains on the town's resources: Krevin Crood, accordingly, would be one of the first to suffer if Wallingford got his way, as he was likely to do. And Peppermore had said further that Krevin Crood knew all about the antiquities of Hathelsborough—knew so much, indeed, that he acted as cicerone to people who wanted to explore the Castle, and the church, and the Moot Hall. Now, supposing that Krevin Crood, with his profound knowledge of the older parts of the town, knew of some mysterious and secret way into the Mayor's Parlour, and had laid in wait there, resolved on killing the man who was threatening by his reforming actions to deprive him of his pension? It was not an impossible theory. And others branched out of it. It was already evident to Brent that Simon Crood, big man though he was in the affairs of the borough, was a schemer and a contriver of mole's work: supposing that he and his gang had employed Krevin Crood as their emissary? That, too, was possible. Underground work! There was underground work all round.

Then, thinking of Alderman Crood, he remembered Alderman Crood's niece; her request to him; his promise to her. He had been puzzled, not a little taken aback by the girl's eager, anxious manner. She had been quiet and demure enough as she sat by Simon Crood's fire, sewing, in silence, a veritable modest mouse, timid and bashful; but in that big, gloomy hall her attitude had changed altogether—she had been almost compelling in her eagerness. And Brent had wondered ever since, at intervals, whatever it could be that she wanted with him—a stranger? But it was near three o'clock now, and instead of indulging in further surmise, he went off to meet her.

Hathelsborough Castle, once one of the most notable fortresses of the North, still remained in an excellent state of preservation. Its great Norman keep formed a landmark that could be seen over many a mile of the surrounding country; many of its smaller towers were still intact, and its curtain walls, barbican and ancient chapel had escaped the ravages of time. The ground around it had been laid out as a public garden, and its great courtyard turned into a promenade, set out with flowerbeds. It was a great place of resort for the townsfolk on summer evenings and on Sundays, but Brent, coming to it in the middle of the afternoon, found it deserted, save for a few nursemaids and children. He went wandering around it and suddenly caught sight of Queenie Crood. She was sitting on a rustic bench in an angle of the walls, a book in her hand; it needed little of Brent's perception to convince him that the book was unread: she was anxiously expecting him.

"Here I am!" he said, with an encouraging smile, as he sat down beside her. "Punctual to the minute, you see!"

He looked closely at her. In the clearer light of day he saw that she was not only a much prettier girl than he had fancied the night before, but that she had more fire and character in her eyes and lips than he had imagined. And though she glanced at him with evident shyness as he came up, and the colour came into her cheeks as she gave him her hand, he was quick to see that she was going to say whatever it was that was in her mind. It was Brent's way to go straight to the point.

"You wanted to speak to me," he said, smiling again. "Fire away!—and don't be afraid."

The girl threw her book aside, and turned to him with obvious candour.

"I won't!" she exclaimed. "I'm not a bit afraid—though I don't know whatever you'll think of me, Mr. Brent, asking advice from a stranger in this barefaced fashion!"

"I've had to seek advice from strangers more than once in my time," said Brent, with a gentle laugh. "Go ahead!"

"It was knowing that you came from London," said Queenie. "You mightn't think it but I never met anybody before who came from London. And—I want to go to London. I will go!"

"Well," remarked Brent slowly, "if young people say they want to go to London, and declare that they will go to London, why, in my experience they end up by going. But, in your case, why not?"

The girl sat silent for a moment, staring straight in front of her at the blue smoke that circled up from the quaint chimney stacks of the town beneath the Castle. Her eyes grew dreamy.

"I want to go on the stage," she said at last. "That's it, Mr. Brent."

Brent turned and looked at her. Under his calm and critical inspection she blushed, but as she blushed she shook her head.

"Perhaps you think I'm one of the stage-struck young women?" she said. "Perhaps you're wondering if I can act? Perhaps——"

"What I'm wondering," interrupted Brent, "is—if you know anything about it? Not about acting, but about the practical side of the thing—the profession? A pretty stiff proposition, you know."

"What I know," said Queenie Crood determinedly, "is that I've got a natural talent for acting. And I'd get on—if only I could get away from this place. I will get away!—if only somebody would give me a bit of advice about going to London and getting—you know—getting put in the way of it. I don't care how hard the life is, nor how hard I'd have to work—it would be what I want, and better than this anyway!"

"You aren't happy in this town?" suggested Brent.

Queenie gave an eloquent glance out of her dark eyes.

"Happy!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Shut up in that house with Simon Crood! Would you be? You saw something of it last night. Would you like to be mewed up there, day in, day out, year in, year out, with no company beyond him and those two cronies of his, who are as bad as himself—mean, selfish, money-grubbers! Oh!"

"Isn't your uncle good to you?" asked Brent with simple directness.

"He's been good enough in giving me bed and board and clothing since my father and mother died six years ago," answered the girl, "and in return I've saved him the wages of the two servants he ought to have. But do you think I want to spend all my life there, doing that sort of thing? I don't—and I won't! And I thought, when I heard that you were a London man, and a journalist, that you'd be able to tell me what to do—to get to London. Help me, Mr. Brent!"

She involuntarily held out her hands to him, and Brent just as involuntarily took them in his. He was a cool and not easily impressed young man, but his pulses thrilled as he felt the warm fingers against his own.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "If—if you can act like that——"

"I'm not acting!" she said quickly.

"Well, well, I didn't say you were," he answered with a laugh. "Only if you could—but of course I'll help you! I'll find out a thing or two for you: I don't know much myself, but I know people who do know. I'll do what I can."

The girl pressed his hands and withdrew her own.

"Thank you, thank you!" she said impulsively. "Oh, if you only knew how I want to get away—and breathe! That house——"

"Look here," interrupted Brent, "you're very candid. I like that—it suits me. Now, frankly you don't like that old uncle of yours? And just why?"

Queenie looked round. There was no one near them, no one indeed in sight, except a nursemaid who wheeled a perambulator along one of the paths, but she sunk her voice to something near a whisper.

"Mr. Brent," she said, "Simon Crood's the biggest hypocrite in this town—and that's implying a good deal more than you'd ever think. He and those friends of his, Mallett and Coppinger, who are always there with him—ah, they think I know nothing, and understand nothing, but I hear their schemings and their talk, veiled as it is. They're deep and subtle, those three—and dangerous. Didn't you see last night that if you'd sat there till midnight or till morning you'd never have had a word out of them—a word, that is, that you wanted? You wouldn't!—they knew better!"

"I got nothing out of them," admitted Brent. He sat thinking in silence for a time. "Look here," he said at last, "you know what I want to find out—who killed my cousin. Help me! Keep your eyes and ears open to anything you see and hear—understand?"

"I will!" answered Queenie. "But you've got a big task before you! You can be certain of this—if the Mayor was murdered for what you called political reasons——"

"Well?" asked Brent, as she paused. "Well?"

"It would all be arranged so cleverly that there's small chance of discovery," she went on. "I know this town—rotten to the core! But I'll help you all I can, and——"

A policeman suddenly came round the corner of the wall, and at sight of Brent touched his peaked cap.

"Looking for you, Mr. Brent," he said. "I heard you'd been seen coming up here. The superintendent would be obliged if you'd step round, sir; he wants to see you at once, particularly."

"Follow you in a moment," answered Brent. He turned to Queenie as the man went away. "When shall I see you again?" he asked.

"I always come here every afternoon," she answered. "It's the only change I get. I come here to read."

"Till to-morrow—or the next day, then," said Brent. He nodded and laughed. "Keep smiling! You'll maybe play Juliet, or some other of those old games, yet."

The girl smiled gratefully, and Brent strode away after the policeman. In a few minutes he was in Hawthwaite's office. The superintendent closed the door, gave him a mysterious glance, and going over to a cupboard produced a long, narrow parcel, done up in brown paper.

"A discovery!" he whispered. "It occurred to me this afternoon to have all the heavy furniture in the Mayor's Parlour examined. No light job, Mr. Brent—but we found this."

And with a jerk of his wrist he drew from the brown paper a long, thin, highly polished rapier, the highly burnished steel of which was dulled along half its length, as if it had been first dimmed and then hastily rubbed.

"I make no doubt that this was what it was done with," continued Hawthwaite. "We found it thrust away between the wainscoting and a heavy bookcase which it took six men to move. And our deputy Town Clerk says that a few days ago he saw this lying on a side table in the Mayor's Parlour—his late Worship observed to him that it was an old Spanish rapier that he'd picked up at some old curiosity shop cheap."

"You'll go into that, and bring it in evidence?" suggested Brent.

"You bet!" replied Hawthwaite grimly. "Oh, we're not going to sleep, Mr. Brent—we'll get at something yet! Slow and sure, sir, slow but sure."

Brent went away presently, and calling on Tansley, the solicitor, walked with him to Wallingford's rooms. During the next two hours they carefully examined all the dead man's private papers. They found nothing that threw any light whatever on his murder. But they came upon his will. Wallingford had left all he possessed to his cousin, Richard Brent, and by the tragedy of the previous night Brent found that he had benefited to the extent of some fifteen thousand pounds.

CHAPTER VI

"Never!" replied Brent. "Still—I'm the only very near relative that he had."

"Well," said Tansley, "it may be mere coincidence, but it's a bit odd that he should be murdered within a week of that will's being made. I'd just like to know if he'd been threatened—openly, anonymously, any way. Looks like it."

"I suppose we shall get into things at the inquest?" asked Brent.

Tansley shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe," he answered. "I've no great faith in inquests myself. But sometimes things do come out. And our coroner, Seagrave, is a painstaking and thorough-going sort of old chap—the leading solicitor in the town too. But it all depends on what evidence can be brought forward. I've always an uneasy feeling, as regards a coroner's inquiry, that the very people who really could tell something never come forward."

"Doesn't that look as if such people were keeping something back that would incriminate themselves?" suggested Brent.

"Not necessarily," replied Tansley. "But it often means that it might incriminate others. And in an old town like this, where the folk are very clannish and closely connected one with another by, literally, centuries of intermarriage between families, you're not going to get one man to give another away."

"You think that even if the murderer is known, or if some one suspected, he would be shielded?" asked Brent.

"In certain eventualities, yes," answered Tansley. "We all know that rumours about your cousin's murder are afloat in the town now—and spreading. Well, the more they spread, the closer and more secretive will those people become who are in the know; that is, of course, if anybody is in the know. That's a fact!"

"What do you think yourself?" said Brent suddenly. "Come now?"

"I think the Mayor was got rid of—and very cleverly," replied Tansley. "So cleverly that I'm doubtful if to-morrow's inquest will reveal anything. However, it's got to be held."

"Well, you'll watch it for me?" said Brent. "I'm going to spare no expense and no pains to get at the truth."

He sat at Tansley's side when the inquest was opened next morning in the principal court of the old Moot Hall. It struck him as rather a curious fact that, although he had followed the profession of journalist for several years, he had never until then been present at the holding of this—one of the most ancient forms of inquiry known to English law. But he was familiar with the history of the thing—he knew that ever since the days of Edward IV the Coroner had held his sitting, super visum corporis, with the aid of at least twelve jurymen, probi et legales homines, there was scarcely in all the range of English legal economy an office more ancient. He inspected the Coroner and his jury with curious interest—Seagrave, Coroner of the Honour of Hathelsborough, was a keen-faced old lawyer, whose astute looks were relieved by a kindly expression; his twelve good men and true were tradesmen of the town, whose exterior promised a variety of character and temperament, from the sharply alert to the dully unimaginative.

There were other people there in whom Brent was speedily interested, and at whom he gazed with speculative attention in the opening stages of the proceedings. The court was crowded: by the time Seagrave, as Coroner, took his seat, there was not a square foot of even standing space. Brent recognized a good many folk. There was Peppermore, with his sharp-eyed boy assistant; there, ranged alongside of them, were many other reporters, from the various county newspapers, and at least one man whom Brent recognized as being from the Press Association in London. And there was a big array of police, with Hawthwaite at its head, and there were doctors, and officials of the Moot Hall, and, amongst the general public, many men whom Brent remembered seeing the previous day in Bull's Snug. Krevin Crood was among these; in a privileged seat, not far away, sat his brother, the Alderman, with Queenie half-hidden at his side, and his satellites, Mallett and Coppinger, in close attendance. And near them, in another privileged place, sat a very pretty woman, of a distinct and superior type, attired in semi-mourning, and accompanied by her elderly female companion. Brent was looking at these two when Tansley nudged his elbow.

"You see that handsome woman over there—next to the older one?" he whispered. "That's the Mrs. Saumarez you've heard of—that your unfortunate cousin was very friendly with. Rich young widow, she is, and deuced pretty and attractive—Wallingford used to dine with her a good deal. I wonder if she's any ideas about this mystery? However, I guess we shall hear many things before the day's out; of course I haven't the slightest notion what evidence is going to be given. But I've a pretty good idea that Seagrave means to say some pretty straight things to the jury!"

Here Tansley proved to be right. The Coroner, in opening the proceedings, made some forcible remarks on their unusual gravity and importance. Here was a case in which the chief magistrate of one of the most ancient boroughs in England had been found dead in his official room under circumstances which clearly seemed to point to murder. Already there were rumours in the town and neighbourhood of the darkest and most disgraceful sort—that the Mayor of Hathelsborough had been done to death, in a peculiarly brutal fashion, by a man or men who disagreed with the municipal reforms which he was intent on carrying out. It would be a lasting, an indelible blot on the old town's fair fame, never tarnished before in this way, if this inquiry came to naught, if no definite verdict was given, he earnestly hoped that by the time it concluded they would be in possession of facts which would, so to speak, clear the town, and any political party in the town. He begged them to give the closest attention to all that would be put before them, and to keep open minds until they heard all the available evidence.

"A fairly easy matter in this particular case!" muttered Tansley, as the jurymen went out to discharge their distasteful, preliminary task of viewing the body of the murdered man. "I don't suppose there's a single man there who has the ghost of a theory, and I'm doubtful if he'll know much more to-night than he knows now—unless something startling is sprung upon us."

Brent was the first witness called into the box when the court settled down to its business. He formally identified the body of the deceased as that of his cousin, John Wallingford: at the time of his death, Mayor of Hathelsborough, and forty-one years of age. He detailed the particulars of his own coming to the town on the evening of the murder, and told how he and Bunning, going upstairs to the Mayor's Parlour, had found Wallingford lying across his desk, dead. All this every man and woman in the court knew already—but the Coroner desired to know more.

"I believe, Mr. Brent," he said, when the witness had given these particulars, "that you are the deceased's nearest blood-relative?"

"I am," replied Brent.

"Then you can give us some information which may be of use. Although the Mayor had lived in Hathelsborough some twelve years or so, he was neither a native of the town nor of these parts. Now, can you give us some particulars about him—about his family and his life before he came to this borough?"

"Yes," said Brent. "My cousin was the only son—only child, in fact—of the Reverend Septimus Wallingford, who was sometime Vicar of Market Meadow, in Berkshire. He is dead—many years ago—so is his wife. My cousin was educated at Reading Grammar School, and on leaving it he was articled to a firm of solicitors in that town. After qualifying as a solicitor, he remained with that firm for some time. About twelve years ago he came to this place as managing clerk to a Hathelsborough firm; its partners eventually retired, and he bought their practice."

"Was he ever married?"

"Never!"

"You knew him well?"

"He was some twelve years my senior," answered Brent, "so I was a mere boy when he was a young man. But of late years we have seen a good deal of each other—he has frequently visited me in London, and this would have been my third visit to him here. We corresponded regularly."

"You were on good terms?"

"We were on very good terms."

"And confidential terms?"

"As far as I know—yes. He took great interest in my work as a journalist, and I took great interest in his career in this town."

"And I understand that he has marked his sense of—shall we say, kinship for you by leaving you all his property?"

"He has!"

"Now, did he ever say anything to you, by word of mouth or letter, about any private troubles?"

"No, never!"

"Or about any public ones?"

"Well, some months ago, soon after he became Mayor of Hathelsborough, he made a sort of joking reference, in a letter, to something that might come under that head."

"Yes? What, now?"

"He said that he had started on his task of cleaning out the Augean stable of Hathelsborough, and that the old task of Hercules was child's play compared to his."

"I believe, Mr. Brent, that you visited your cousin here in the town about Christmas last? Did he say anything to you about Hathelsborough at that time? I mean, as regards what he called his Augean stables task?"

Brent hesitated. He glanced at the eagerly-listening spectators, and he smiled a little.

"Well," he replied half-hesitatingly, "he did! He said that in his opinion Hathelsborough was the rottenest and most corrupt little town in all England!"

"Did you take that as a seriously meant statement, Mr. Brent?"

"Oh, well—he laughed as he made it. I took it as a specimen of his rather heightened way of putting things."

"Did he say anything that led you to think that he believed himself to have bitter enemies in the town?"

"No," said Brent, "he did not."

"Neither then nor at any other time?"

"Neither then nor at any other time."

The Coroner asked no further questions, and Brent sat down again by Tansley, and settled himself to consider whatever evidence might follow. He tried to imagine himself a Coroner or juryman, and to estimate and weigh the testimony of each succeeding witness in its relation to the matter into which the court was inquiring. Some of it, he thought, was relevant; some had little in it that carried affairs any further. Yet he began to see that even the apparently irrelevant evidence was not without its importance. They were links, these statements, these answers; links that went to the making of a chain.

He was already familiar with most of the evidence: he knew what each witness was likely to tell before one or other entered the box. Bunning came next after himself; Bunning had nothing new to tell. Nor was there anything new in the medical evidence given by Dr. Wellesley and Dr. Barber—all the town knew how the Mayor had been murdered, and the purely scientific explanations as to the cause of death were merely details. More interest came when Hawthwaite produced the fragment of handkerchief picked up on the hearth of the Mayor's Parlour, half-burnt; and when he brought forward the rapier which had been discovered behind the bookcase; still more when a man who kept an old curiosity shop in a back street of the town proved that he had sold the rapier to Wallingford only a few days before the murder. But interest died down again while the Borough Surveyor produced elaborate plans and diagrams, illustrating the various corridors, passages, entrances and exits of the Moot Hall, with a view to showing the difficulty of access to the Mayor's Parlour. It revived once more when the policeman who had been on duty at the office in the basement stepped into the box and was questioned as to the possibilities of entrance to the Moot Hall through the door near which his desk was posted. For on pressure by the Coroner he admitted that between six and eight o'clock on the fateful evening he had twice been absent from the neighbourhood of that door for intervals of five or six minutes—it was therefore possible that the murderer had slipped in and slipped out without attracting attention.

This admission produced the first element of distinct sensation which had so far materialized. As almost every person present was already fairly well acquainted with the details of what had transpired on the evening of the murder—Peppermore having published every scrap of information he could rake up, in successive editions of his Monitor—the constable's belated revelation came as a surprise. Hawthwaite turned on the witness with an irate, astonished look; the Coroner glanced at Hawthwaite as if he were puzzled; then looked down at certain memoranda lying before him. He turned from this to the witness, a somewhat raw, youthful policeman.

"I understood that you were never away from that door between six and eight o'clock on the evening in question?" he said. "Now you admit that you were twice away from it?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir, I clean forgot that when—when the superintendent asked me at first. I—I was a bit flustered like."

"Now let us get a clear statement about this," said the Coroner, after a pause. "We know quite well from the plans, and from our own knowledge, that anyone could get up to the Mayor's Parlour through the police office in the basement at the rear of the Moot Hall. What time did you go on duty at the door that opens into the office, from St. Laurence Lane?"

"Six o'clock, sir."

"And you were about the door—at a desk there, eh?—until when?"

"Till after eight, sir."

"But you say you were absent for a short time, twice?"

"Yes, sir, I remember now that I was."

"What were the times of those two absences?"

"Well, sir, about ten minutes to seven I went along to the charge office for a few minutes—five or six minutes. Then at about a quarter to eight I went downstairs into the cellar to get some paraffin for a lamp—I might be away as long, then, sir."

"And, of course, during your absence anybody could have left or entered—unnoticed?"

"Well, they could, sir, but I don't think anybody did."

"Why, now?"

"Because, sir, the door opening into St. Laurence Lane is a very heavy one, and I never heard it either open or close. The latch is a heavy one, too, sir, and uncommon stiff."

"Still, anybody might," observed the Coroner. "Now, what is the length of the passage between that door, the door at the foot of the stairs leading to this court—by which anybody would have to come to get that way to the Mayor's Parlour?"

The witness reflected for a moment.

"Well, about ten yards, sir," he answered.

The Coroner looked at the plan which the Borough Surveyor had placed before him and the jury a few minutes previously. Before he could say anything further, Hawthwaite rose from his seat and making his way to him exchanged a few whispered remarks with him. Presently the Coroner nodded, as if in assent to some suggestions.

"Oh, very well," he said. "Then perhaps we'd better have her at once. Call—what's her name, did you say? Oh, yes—Sarah Jane Spizey!"

From amidst a heterogeneous collection of folk, men and women, congregated at the rear of the witness-box, a woman came forward—one of the most extraordinary looking creatures that he had ever seen, thought Brent. She was nearly six feet in height; she was correspondingly built; her arms appeared to be as brawny as a navvy's; her face was of the shape and roundness of a full moon; her mouth was a wide slit, her nose a button; her eyes were as shrewd and hard as they were small and close-set. A very Grenadier of a woman!—and apparently quite unmoved by the knowledge that everybody was staring at her.

Sarah Jane Spizey—yes. Wife of the Town Bellman. Resident in St. Laurence Lane. Went out charing sometimes; sometimes worked at Marriner's Laundry. Odd-job woman, in fact.

"Mrs. Spizey," said the Coroner, "I understand that on the evening of Mr. Wallingford's death you were engaged in some work in the Moot Hall. Is that so?"

"Yes, sir. Which I was a-washing the floor of this very court."

"What time was that, Mrs. Spizey?"

"Which I was at it, your Worshipful, from six o'clock to eight."

"Did you leave this place at all during that time?"

"Not once, sir; not for a minute."

"Now during the whole of that time, Mrs. Spizey, did you see anybody come up those stairs, cross the court, and go towards the Mayor's Parlour?"

"Which I never did, sir! I never see a soul of any sort. Which the place was empty, sir, for all but me and my work, sir."

The Coroner motioned Mrs. Spizey to stand down, and glanced at Hawthwaite.

"I think this would be a convenient point at which to adjourn," he said. "I——"

But Hawthwaite's eyes were turned elsewhere. In the body of the court an elderly man had risen.

CHAPTER VII

The folk who crowded the court to its very doors looked on impatiently while Epplewhite went through the legal formalities. Laying down the Testament on which he had taken the oath, he turned to the Coroner. But the Coroner again nodded to him.

"You had better tell us what is in your mind in your own way, Mr. Epplewhite," he said. "We are, of course, in utter ignorance of what it is you can tell. Put it in your own fashion."

Epplewhite folded his hands on the ledge of the witness-box and looked around the court before finally settling his eyes on the Coroner: it seemed to Brent as if he were carefully considering the composition, severally and collectively, of his audience.

"Well, sir," he began, in slow, measured accents, "what I have to say, as briefly as I can, is this: everybody here, I believe, is aware that our late Mayor and myself were on particularly friendly terms. We'd always been more or less of friends since his first coming to the town: we'd similar tastes and interests. But our friendship had been on an even more intimate basis during the last year or two, and especially of recent months, owing, no doubt, to the fact that we belonged to the same party on the Town Council, and were both equally anxious to bring about a thorough reform in the municipal administration of the borough. When Mr. Wallingford was elected Mayor last November, he and I, and our supporters on the Council, resolved that during his year of office we would do our best to sweep away certain crying abuses and generally get the affairs of Hathelsborough placed on a more modern and a better footing. We were all——"

The Coroner held up his hand.

"Let us have a clear understanding," he said. "I am gathering—officially, of course—from what you are saying that in Hathelsborough Town Council there are two parties, opposed to each other: a party pledged to Reform, and another that is opposed to Reform. Is that so, Mr. Epplewhite?"

"Precisely so," answered the witness. "And of the Reform party, the late Mayor was the leader. This is well known in the town—it's a matter of common gossip. It is also well known to members of the Town Council that Mr. Wallingford's proposals for reform were of a very serious and drastic nature, that we of his party were going to support them through thick and thin, and that they were bitterly opposed by the other party, whose members were resolved to fight them tooth and nail."

"It may be as well to know what these abuses were which you proposed to reform?" suggested the Coroner. "I want to get a thorough clearing-up of everything."

"Well," responded the witness, with another glance around the court, "the late Mayor had a rooted and particular objection to the system of payments and pensions in force at present, which, without doubt, owes its existence to favouritism and jobbery. There are numerous people in the town drawing money from the borough funds who have no right to it on any ground whatever. There are others who draw salaries for what are really sinecures. A great deal of the ratepayers' money has gone in this way—men in high places in the Corporation have used their power to benefit relations and favourites: I question if there's another town in the country in which such a state of things would be permitted. But there is a more serious matter than that, one which Mr. Wallingford was absolutely determined, with the help of his party, and backed by public opinion, if he could win it over—no easy thing, for we had centuries of usage and tradition against us!—to bring to an end. That is, the fact that the financial affairs of this town are entirely controlled by what is virtually a self-constituted body, called the Town Trustees. They are three in number. If one dies, the surviving two select his successor—needless to say, they take good care that they choose a man who is in thorough sympathy with their own ideas. Now the late Mayor was convinced that this system led to nothing but—well, to put it mildly, to nothing but highly undesirable results, and he claimed that the Corporation had the right to deprive the existing Town Trustees of their power, and to take into its own hands the full administration of the borough finances. And of course there was much bitter animosity aroused by this proposal, because the Town Trustees have had a free hand and done what they liked with the town's money for a couple of centuries!"

The Coroner, who was making elaborate notes, lifted his pen.

"Who are the Town Trustees at present, Mr. Epplewhite?" he inquired.

Epplewhite smiled, as a man might smile who knows that a question is only asked as a mere formality.

"The Town Trustees at present, sir," he answered quietly, "are Mr. Alderman Crood, Deputy Mayor; Mr. Councillor Mallett, Borough Auditor; and Mr. Councillor Coppinger, Borough Treasurer."

Amidst a curious silence, broken only by the scratching of the Coroner's pen, Alderman Crood rose heavily in his place amongst the spectators.

"Mr. Coroner," he said, with some show of injured feeling, "I object, sir, to my name being mentioned in connection with this here matter. You're inquiring, sir——"

"I'm inquiring, Mr. Crood, into the circumstances surrounding the death of John Wallingford," said the Coroner. "If you can throw any light on them, I shall be glad to take your evidence. At present I am taking the evidence of another witness. Yes, Mr. Epplewhite?"

"Well, sir, I come to recent events," continued Epplewhite, smiling grimly as the Deputy-Mayor, flushed and indignant, resumed his seat. "The late Mayor was very well aware that his proposals were regarded, not merely with great dislike, but with positive enmity. He, and those of us who agreed with him, were constantly asked in the Council Chamber what right we had to be endeavouring to interfere with a system that had suited our fathers and grandfathers? We were warned too, in the Council Chamber, that we should get ourselves into trouble——"

"Do you refer to actual threats?" asked the Coroner.

"Scarcely that, sir—hints, and so on," replied the witness. "But of late, in the case of the late Mayor, actual threats have been used. And to bring my evidence to a point, Mr. Coroner, I now wish to make a certain statement, on my oath, and to produce a certain piece of evidence, to show that Mr. Wallingford's personal safety was threatened only a few days before his murder!"

Thus saying, Epplewhite thrust a hand into the inner pocket of his coat, and, producing a letter, held it out at arm's length, so that every one could see it. So holding it, he turned to the Coroner.

"It is just a week ago, sir," he proceeded, "that Mr. Wallingford came to supper at my house. After supper, he and I, being alone, began talking about the subject which was uppermost in our minds—municipal reform. That day I had had considerable talk with two or three fellow-members of the Council who belonged to the opposite party, and as a result I showed to Wallingford that opposition to our plans was growing more concentrated, determined and bitter. He laughed a little satirically. 'It's gone beyond even that stage with me, personally, Epplewhite,' he said. 'Don't you ever be surprised, my friend, if you hear of my being found with a bullet through my head or a knife between my ribs!' 'What do you mean?' said I. 'Nonsense!' He laughed again, and pulled out this envelope. 'All right,' he answered. 'You read that!' I read what was in the envelope, sir—and I now pass it to you!"

The Coroner silently took the letter which was passed across to him from the witness, withdrew a sheet of paper from it, and read the contents with an inscrutable face and amidst a dead silence. It seemed a long time before he turned to the jury. Then, he held up the sheet of paper and the envelope which had contained it.

"Gentlemen!" he said. "I shall have to draw your particular attention to this matter. This is an anonymous letter. From the date on the postmark, it was received by the late Mayor about a week before he showed it to Mr. Epplewhite. It is a typewritten communication. The address on the envelope is typewritten; the letter itself is typewritten. I will now read the letter to you. It is as follows: