I stood for a moment in the gathering darkness listening to the notes of wild fowl. Once I caught myself listening for something else: the beating of a drum . . .
Then again I set out. I followed a narrow lane for the best part of half a mile. Ruts, but not recent ruts, combined to turn its surface into a series of muddy streamlets. At length, just ahead, I saw the cottage of ghostly reputation.
Mist was growing unpleasantly like certifiable fog, but I found the broken window and scrambled in. There was no evidence that anyone had entered the building for a year or more. It was a depressing place as I saw it by the light of the flashlamp. Some biblical texts were decaying upon one wall and in another room, among a lot of litter, I found a headless doll.
I was glad to get out of that cottage.
Greater darkness had come by the time I had regained the lane, and I paused in the porch to relight my pipe, mentally reviewing the map and the sergeant’s instructions. Satisfied that the way was clear in my mind, I moved on.
Very soon I found myself upon a muddy path following the banks of a stream. I was unable to tell how much water the stream held, for it was thick with rushes and weeds. But presently as I tramped along I could see that it widened out into a series of reedy pools—and right ahead of me, as though the path had led to it, I saw a wooden hut.
I paused. This was not in accordance with the plan. I had made a mistake and lost my way. However, the place in front of me was apparently an uninhabited building, and pushing on I examined it with curiosity.
It was a roughly constructed hut, and I saw that it possessed a sort of crude landing stage overhanging the stream. The only visible entrance from the bank was a door secured by a padlock. The padlock proved to be unfastened. Some recollection of this part of Essex provided by the garrulous sergeant flashed through my mind. At one time these shallow streams running out into the wider estuary had been celebrated for the quality of the eels which came there in certain seasons. As I opened the door I knew that this was a former eel fisher’s hut.
I shone a beam of light into the interior.
At first glance the place appeared to be empty, then I saw something . . . A recently opened sardine tin lay upon a ledge. Near it was a bottle bearing the label of a local brewer. And as I stepped forward and so obtained a better view I discovered in an alcove on the right of the ledge part of a loaf and a packet of butter.
My heart beat faster. By sheer accident I had found what I sought, for it seemed highly improbable from the appearance of the hut that this evidence had been left by anyone but Sergeant Hythe!
And now I made another discovery.
At one end of the place was what looked like a deep cupboard. Setting my lamp on the ledge I opened the cupboard—and what I saw clinched the matter.
There was a shelf about a foot up from the floor, and on it lay an open knapsack! I saw a clasp knife, a box of bar chocolate, a small tin of biscuits and a number of odds and ends which I was too excited to notice at the time—for, most extraordinary discovery of all, I saw a queer-looking hat surmounted by a coral bead.
At this I stared fascinatedly, and then taking it up, carried it nearer to the light. Its character was unmistakable.
It was a mandarin’s cap!
And as I stared all but incredulously at this thing which I had found in a deserted hut on an Essex marsh, a faint movement made me acutely, coldly alert.
Someone was walking very quietly along the path outside . . .
What sounded like the booming call of a bittern came from over the marshes. The footsteps drew nearer. I stood still in an agony of indecision. Like a revelation the truth had come to me: We were searching for the base used by the murdered man. Others were searching, too. And this astounding piece of evidence which I held in my hand—this was the object of their search!
I knew from the nearness of the footsteps that retreat was impossible. Already I had selected my hiding place. What to do with the mandarin’s cap was the only questionable point. I solved it quickly. I placed the cap upon the ledge littered with the remains of what had probably been poor Hythe’s last meal, extinguished my flash-lamp, crept into the cupboard and nearly closed the door . . .
The Mandarin’s Cap
Through the chink of the opening I stared out. I wondered if the fact that I had left the door open would warn whoever approached that someone was inside. However, he might not be aware that it was ordinarily fastened. Closer and closer drew the footsteps on the muddy path; then the sound gave place to the swishing of long, wet grass, and I knew that the intruder was actually at the door.
What had seemed at first to be impenetrable darkness proved now to allow of some limited vision. Framed in the grey oblong of the doorway I saw a motionless figure.
So still it was in that small building that I wondered if the sound of my breathing might be audible. The booming cry sounded again from near at hand, and I questioned it, listening intently, wondering if it might have been simulated—a signal from some watcher covering the motionless figure framed in the doorway.
During the few seconds that elapsed in this way I managed to make out certain details. The new arrival wore a long raincoat and what looked like a black cap; also I saw leggings or riding boots. So much I had discovered, peering cautiously out, when a beam from an electric torch shot through the darkness, directed straight into the hut. Its light fell upon the mandarin’s cap.
“Ah!” I heard.
That one exclamation revealed an astounding fact: the intruder was a girl!
She stepped in and crossed to the ledge. My heart began to beat irregularly. A queer mingling of fear and hope which had claimed me at the sound of her voice now became focused in one huge indescribable emotion as I saw that pure profile, the clinging curls under the black cap, the outline, I thought, of a Greek goddess.
As I quietly slipped across to the open door and stood with my back to it, the girl turned in a flash—and I found myself looking into those magnificent eyes which had so strangely and persistently haunted me from the hour of that first brief meeting.
Their expression now in the light reflected from the ray of the torch, which moved unsteadily in her grasp, was compounded of fear and defiance. She was breathing rapidly, and I saw the glitter of white teeth through slightly parted lips.
Quite suddenly, it seemed, she recognized me. As I wore a soft-brimmed hat, perhaps my features were partly indistinguishable.
“You!” she whispered, “you again!”
“Yes,” I said shortly. Now, although it had cost me an effort, I had fully mastered myself. “I again. May I ask what you are doing here?”
A hardness crept over her features; her lips set firmly. She put the torch down on the ledge beside her while I watched her intently, then:
“I might quite well ask you the same question,” she replied, and her enchanting accent gave the words the value of music, I laughed, standing squarely in the doorway and watching her.
Wisps of fog floated between us.
“I am here because a man was brutally murdered last night—and here, on the ledge beside you, is the clue to his murderer.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked quietly.
“Only about what I know.”
“Suppose what you say is true, what has it to do with you?”
“It is every man’s business to run down a murderer.”