The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chestermarke Instinct, by J. S. Fletcher This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Chestermarke Instinct
Author: J. S. Fletcher
Release Date: February 2, 2009 note 1 Last updated: March 2, 2009
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHESTERMARKE INSTINCT ***
Produced by Annie McGuire
THE MYSTERY STORIES OF
"We always feel as though we were really spreading happiness when we can announce a genuinely satisfactory mystery story, such as J. B. Fletcher's new one. "-N. P. D. in the New York Globe.
THE MIDDLE TEMPLE MURDER note 2
"Unquestionably, the detective story of the season and, therefore, one which no lover of detective fiction should miss."-The Broadside.
THE TALLEYRAND MAXIM note 3
"A crackerjack mystery tale; the story of Linford Pratt, who earnestly desired to get on in life, by hook or by crook-with no objection whatever to crookedness, so long as it could be performed in safety and secrecy."-Knickerbocker Press.
THE PARADISE MYSTERY note 4
"As a weaver of detective tales Mr. Fletcher is entitled to a seat among the elect. His numerous followers will find his latest book fully as absorbing as anything from his pen that has previously appeared."-New York Times.
DEAD MEN'S MONEY note 5
"The story is one that holds the reader with more than the mere interest of sensational events: Mr. Fletcher writes in a notable style, and he has a knack for sketching character rapidly. Reminds one of Stevenson-and Mr. Fletcher sustains the comparison well."-Newark Evening News.
THE ORANGE-YELLOW DIAMOND note 6
"… A rattling good yarn…. The excellence of The Orange yellow Diamond does not depend, however, entirely upon its plot. It is an uncommonly well written tale."-New York Times.
To be published July 1st, 1921:
THE BOROUGH TREASURER
Blackmail, murder and the secret of an ancient quarry go to make a very exciting yarn.
$2.00 net each at all booksellers or from the Publisher
ALFRED A. KNOPF, New York.
BY J. S. FLETCHER
NEW YORK ALFRED A KNOPF MCMXXI
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS CHAPTER
The Missing Bank Manager, 9
II. The Ellersdeane Deposit, 19
III. Mr. Chestermarke Disclaims Liability, 29
IV. The Modern Young Woman, 39
V. The Search Begins, 49
VI. Ellersdeane Hollow, 59
VII. The Travelling Tinker, 69
VIII. The Saturday Night Stranger, 79
IX. No Further Information, 89
X. The Chestermarke Way, 99
XI. The Search-Warrant, 109
XII. The First Find, 119
XIII. The Partners Unbend, 129
XIV. The Midnight Summons, 139
XV. Mr. Frederick Hollis, 149
XVI. The Lead Mine, 159
XVII. Accident or Murder? 170
XVIII. The Incomplete Cheque, 179
XIX. The Dead Man's Brother, 189
XX. The Other Cheque, 200
XXI. About Cent per Cent, 209
XXII. Speculation-and Certainty, 221
XXIII. The Aggrieved Victim, 230
XXIV. Mrs. Carswell? 240
XXV. The Portrait, 248
XXVI. The Lightning Flash, 257
XXVII. The Old Dove-Cot, 266
XXVIII. Sound-Proof, 273
XXIX. The Sparrows and the Sphere, 279
XXX. Wreckage, 289
XXXI. The Prisoner Speaks, 295 CHAPTER I
THE MISSING BANK MANAGER
Every Monday morning, when the clock of the old parish church in Scarnham Market-Place struck eight, Wallington Neale asked himself why on earth he had chosen to be a bank clerk. On all the other mornings of the week this question never occurred to him: on Sunday he never allowed a thought of the bank to cross his mind: from Sunday to Saturday he was firmly settled in the usual rut, and never dreamed of tearing himself out of it. But Sunday's break was unsettling: there was always an effort in starting afresh on Monday. The striking of St. Alkmund's clock at eight on Monday morning invariably found him sitting down to his breakfast in his rooms, overlooking the quaint old Market-Place, once more faced by the fact that a week of dull, uninteresting work lay before him. He would go to the bank at nine, and at the bank he would remain, more or less, until five. He would do that again on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had somehow suggested himself to himself.
On this particular Monday morning, Neale, happening to catch sight of his reflection in the mirror which stood on his parlour mantelpiece, propounded the usual question with added force. There were reasons. It was a beautiful morning. It was early spring. There was a blue sky, and the rooks and jackdaws were circling in a clear air about the church tower and over the old Market-Cross. He could hear thrushes singing in the trees in the Vicarage garden, close by. Everything was young. And he was young. It would have been affectation on his part to deny either his youth or his good looks. He glanced at his mirrored self without pride, but with due recognition of his good figure, his strong muscles, his handsome, boyish face, with its cluster of chestnut hair and steady grey eyes. All that, he knew, wanted life, animation, movement. At twenty-three he was longing for something to take him out of the treadmill round in which he had been fixed for five years. He had no taste for handing out money in exchange for cheques, in posting up ledgers, in writing dull, formal letters. He would have been much happier with an old flannel shirt, open at the throat, a pick in his hands, making a new road in a new country, or in driving a path through some primeval wood. There would have been liberty in either occupation: he could have flung down the pick at any moment and taken up the hunter's gun: he could have turned right or left at his own will in the unexplored forest. But there at the bank it was just doing the same thing over and over again: what he had done last week he would do again this week: what had happened last year would happen again this year. It was all pure, unadulterated, dismal monotony.
Like most things, it had come about without design: he had just drifted into it. His father and mother had both died when he was a boy; he had inherited a small property which brought in precisely one hundred and fifty pounds a year: it was tied up to him in such a fashion that he would have his three pounds a week as long as ever he lived. But as his guardian, Mr. John Horbury, the manager of Chestermarke's Bank at Scarnham, pointed out to him when he left school, he needed more than three pounds a week if he wished to live comfortably and like a gentleman. Still, a hundred and fifty a year of sure and settled income was a fine thing, an uncommonly fine thing-all that was necessary was to supplement it. Therefore-a nice, quiet, genteel profession-banking, to wit. Light work, an honourable calling, an eminently respectable one. In a few years he would have another hundred and fifty a year: a few years more, and he would be a manager, with at least six hundred: he might, well before he was a middle-aged man, be commanding a salary of a thousand a year. Banking, by all means, counselled Mr. Horbury-and offered him a vacancy which had just then arisen at Chestermarke's. And Neale, willing to be guided by a man for whom he had much respect, took the post, and settled down in the old bank in the quiet, sleepy market-town, wherein one day was precisely like another day-and every year his dislike for his work increased, and sometimes grew unbearably keen, especially when spring skies and spring air set up a sudden stirring in his blood. On this Monday morning that stirring amounted to something very like a physical ache.