"You propose that Miss Marty, here, should accompany you back to Plymouth?"
"That was the suggestion in my mind. And you, too, sir--that is, if you can make it square with your engagements. Mrs. Basket will be happy to extend her hospitality. . . . Two heads are better than one, sir. We will prosecute our investigations together . . . with the help of the constabulary, of course. We should communicate with the constabulary, or our position may eventually prove an awkward one."
"Yes, yes; the man having disappeared from your house."
"Quite so. Apart from that, I see no immediate necessity for making the matter public; but am willing to defer to your judgment."
"That is a question we had better leave until we have seen the Chief Constable at Plymouth. To publish the news here and now in Troy would cause an infinite alarm, possibly an idle one. By the time we reach Plymouth our friend may have reappeared, or at least disclosed his whereabouts."
Alas! at Plymouth, where they arrived late that night, no news of the missing one awaited them. Mrs. Basket, her face white as a sheet, her ample body swathed in a red flannel dressing-gown, herself opened the door to the travellers as soon as the chaise drew up. For hours she had been expecting it, listening for the sounds of wheels.
Almost before the introductions were over she announced with tears that she had nothing to tell.
For a while she turned her thoughts perforce from the disaster to the business of making ready the bedrooms for her guests and preparing a light supper. But the meal had not been in progress five minutes, before, in the act of loading Miss Marty"s plate, she sat back with a gasp.
"Oh, and I was forgetting! Misfortunes, they say, never come singly, and--would you believe it, my dear?--as I was walking in the garden this afternoon, thinking to calm my poor brain, I happened to look at the fish-pond and what do I see there but two of the gold-fish floating with their chests uppermost!"
"Chests, madam?" queried Dr. Hansombody.
But sharp as his query was came a cry from Mr. Basket.
"The fish-pond?" He thrust back his chair, a terrible surmise dawning in his eyes. "And the fish, you say, floating--"
"Chest uppermost," repeated Mrs. Basket, "and dead as dead."
"She _means_, on their backs," her husband explained parenthetically; "a fashion de parlour, as the French would say. Did you examine the pond? Heavens, Maria! did you examine the pond?"
"Elihu, you make my flesh creep! Why should I examine the pond?
You don"t mean to tell me--"
"My shrimping-net! Don"t sit shivering there, Maria, but bring me my shrimping-net! And a lantern!" Mr. Basket caught up a Sheffield-plated candle-sconce from the table, motioned the Doctor to fetch along its fellow, and led the way out to the front garden.
The night outside was windless, but dark as the inside of a hat.
Their candles drew a dewy glimmer from the congregated statuary: apparitions so ghostly that the Doctor scarcely repressed a cry of terror. Mr. Basket advanced to the pond and set down his light on the brink.
"A foot deep . . . only a foot deep," he murmured. "It could not possibly cover him."
The two goldfish floated as Mrs. Basket had described them.
Mr. Basket, taking the shrimping-net from his wife, who shrank back at once into darkness, plunged it beneath the water, deep into the mud. Dr. Hansombody held a sconce aloft to guide him.
The two ladies cowered behind a pedestal supporting the Farnese Hercules.
For a while nothing was heard in the garden but the splash of water as Mr. Basket plunged his net again and again and drew it forth dripping. Each time as he drew it to sh.o.r.e, he emptied the mud on the brink and bent over it, the Doctor holding a candle close to a.s.sist the inspection.
As he emptied his net for maybe the twentieth time, something jingled on the pebbles. Mr. Basket stooped swiftly, plunged his hand in the slime, and held it up to the light.
"Eh?" said the Doctor, peering close. "What? A latchkey?"
"My duplicate latchkey!" In spite of the heat engendered by his efforts, Mr. Basket"s teeth chattered. "My wife gave it to him the last thing."
He turned and drove his net beneath the dark water with redoubled energy. The very next haul brought to sh.o.r.e an even more convincing piece of evidence--a silver snuff-box.
It was the Major"s. Mr. Basket had seen his friend use it a thousand times; and called Miss Marty forward to identify it. Yes, undeniably it was the Major"s snuff-box, engraved with "S.H.," his initials, in entwined italics.
The two male searchers, regardless of their small-clothes, now plunged knee-deep into the pond. For an hour they searched it; searched it from end to end; searched it twice over.
No further discovery rewarded them.
Here was evidence--tangible evidence. Yet of what? The Major had visited the pond during his hosts" absence at the theatre, and had dropped these two articles into it. How, if accidentally?
If purposely, why? The mystery had become a deeper mystery.
A little after midnight the search was abandoned. Mrs. Basket administered hot brandy-and-water to the two gentlemen, and the household retired to rest--but not to sleep.
At breakfast next morning, before seeking the Chief Constable, Mr. Basket and the Doctor compared notes. Each owned himself more puzzled than ever.
As it turned out, their discoveries led them straight away from the true explanation. The Chief Constable, when they interviewed him, was disposed for a brief while to suspect the press-gang. There had, in fact, on the night before last, been a "hot press," as it was called. At least a score of bodies of the Royal Marines, in parties of twelve and fourteen, each accompanied by a marine and a naval officer, had boarded the colliers off the new quay, the ships in Cattewater and the Pool, and had swept the streets and gin-shops.
A gang of seamen, too, had entered the theatre and cleared the whole gallery except the women; had even descended upon the stage and carried off practically the whole company of actors, including the famous Mr. Sturge. (This Mr. Basket could confirm.) The whole town was in a ferment. He had already received at least seventy visits from inquirers after missing relatives.
But the discoveries in the fish-pond led him clean off the scent.
No press-gang would enter a private house or a private garden such as Mr. Basket"s. Even supposing that their friend had fallen a victim to the press while walking the streets, they must admit it to be inconceivable that he should return and cast a latchkey and a snuff-box into Mr. Basket"s fish-pond.
"_Cui bono?_" asked the Chief Constable.
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Basket.
"Well, in other words, what do you suggest he did it for? It"s an expression we use in these cases."
The Doctor granted the force of the Chief Constable"s reasoning, but suggested that there could be no harm in rowing round the Fleet and making inquiries.
The Chief Constable answered again that the squadron--it was no more than a squadron--had taken precious good care to time the press for the eve of sailing; had in fact weighed anchor in the small hours of the morning, and by this time had probably joined Admiral Cornwallis"s fleet off Brest.
What was to be done?
"In my belief," said the Chief Constable, "it"s a case of foul play.
Mind, I"m not accusing anyone," he went on; "but this person disappeared from your house, Mr. Basket, and in your place I"d put myself right with the public by getting out a handbill at once."
This dreadful possibility of coming under public suspicion had never occurred to Mr. Basket. He begged to be supplied at once with pen, ink and paper.
""Lost, stolen or strayed"--is that how you begin?"
"If you ask me," said the Chief Constable, "I"d put him down as "Missing." It"s more usual."
""Missing," then. "On the night of May 2nd--""
"From your house."
"Must that go in?" Mr. Basket pleaded.