‘Now, then,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘It was dark, you know,’ said O’Hara, ‘and I don’t remember any landmarks, but at any rate, we ought to keep straight along this road for quite two hundred yards, and then we turn off to the right across a stile.’
The road sloped uphill. The stile was gained. Regarding it doubtfully, O’Hara refused to commit himself to a definite statement that it was the right stile, but said he thought it must be.
‘It’s queer,’ he said. ‘It all looks so ordinary by daylight. I feel as though I’d dreamed the whole thing now. You don’t think I had delirium tremens, or a mental blackout, do you?’
‘Don’t weaken,’ said Gascoigne, grinning. ‘There must be a right of way, anyhow, if there’s a stile, so we shan’t be trespassing.’ He climbed over, followed reluctantly by his cousin.
The footpath was a very rough track which led upwards to a five-barred gate. Beyond the gate were two disc barrows on the side of the hill, and, further over, a circle of standing stones.
‘That’s where it was,’ said O’Hara suddenly. He pointed towards the stones. ‘That’s where I got out of the car. Let’s look for tracks. Would a car leave tracks on this turf? Anyway, it certainly does seem fishy. Where could one take a car from here?’
Gascoigne led the way to the circle of standing stones. None of the stones was more than seven feet high. Some were very much shorter. One was nothing more than a small boulder almost hidden in the grass. The ditch which would have surrounded the stones when they were used as a prehistoric temple was almost wholly ploughed out, but traces of it could be seen by those who knew what to look for, and Gascoigne was soon pacing a circular track about twenty yards distant from the stones, of which there were nine.
‘You know,’ he said, returning to O’Hara, who was looking for tracks of the car, ‘the best thing for us to do, I fancy, is to go to the local hospital. Hospitals always make Sunday a visiting day. If he did not arrive at the hospital we’ve got something definite to go on, and then, I suppose, we shall have to stir up strife.’
‘But can we? I can’t see us going to the police and telling them that a man ought to have arrived in hospital and hasn’t turned up,’ said O’Hara. ‘What reason could we give for butting in?’
‘The best of reasons—the one you gave me yourself. Why did that woman say it was infectious illness when all the time the fellow was bleeding?—possibly bleeding to death?’
‘I know. That is the point. Look here, then, I’ll tell you what. Let’s walk over the hill and make sure I can identify the farmhouse. Then, possibly, we could spy out the lie of the land, and, after we’ve been to the hospital, we could then perhaps go to the police. All the same, I’m not very keen. It isn’t our business. I mean, they didn’t attempt to coerce me. I helped them of my own free will. Besides, who’s going to believe me?’
Gascoigne gazed at his cousin. ‘Nonsense, man! What are you afraid of?’ he asked.
‘Being a nosey parker, I suppose. Come on, then. It ought to be this way. We never came out on to a road. I know that all right. I could hardly hold that poor blighter on to the seat.’
They returned to the path and followed it over rough grass until they came to a barn.
‘This isn’t the place,’ said O’Hara. ‘It was further off, and the house was quite a fair size.’
They went through a gate and the path changed into a cart-track beside a field. There was still another gate at the top, but, once through this, the track turned sharply to the left and sloped steeply down to a large collection of buildings grouped round a house among trees.
‘This is the place,’ said O’Hara, ‘but it seems such a short distance… I mean, we drove miles, I should have thought.’
At the foot of the hill they swung left again through a gateway which led to an open cartshed. Beyond the cartshed was the house. A narrow road climbed a hill to the east of the farmyard, but was soon lost to sight among the trees. Beyond the house, the lane, from which O’Hara had seen the light in the empty room, sagged sandily past the ruined cottages and into the woods.
‘This is the place, then?’ murmured Gascoigne, and gazed in great surprise at the house. Its windows were uncurtained, its appearance was that of dissolution and decay, and it seemed to have been tenantless for some time. The front door swung back as he put up his hand to knock, and disclosed a mildewed, stained, dilapidated hall, a picture frame hanging by one cord and part of an old mangle lying at the foot of the stairs.
He stepped aside to look in at the nearest window. He beckoned O’Hara to join him.
‘I’m going in,’ he whispered. ‘This is a very rum go. You stand by in case anybody comes who thinks we’ve no business in here.’
‘No, I’ll go first,’ said O’Hara. ‘I’d like to see it by daylight. I can hardly make any comparisons, though, because I saw so little last night.’
He was not gone very long. The side-door had been bolted on the inside, but he found his way to the bedroom by way of the front stairs, and explored the rest of the house before he returned to his cousin.
‘Nothing,’ he said, very briefly. ‘But the bedroom floor and the stairs have recently been scrubbed, I think. You go in and have a look.’
Gascoigne contented himself with the most cursory inspection of the house. It was the front room downstairs to which he devoted most attention. There were ashes in the grate which he took care not to disturb, and a circle of lighter film showed against the dust on the mantelpiece.
‘An oil lamp; the light you saw shining from the house,’ he said. ‘I wonder why they lit it? A signal to someone, I suppose.’
‘Did you go upstairs?’ asked O’Hara.
‘Yes. The room and the stairs have been scrubbed all right. Well, now for the hospital. We’d better get back to that pub and ask where it is. If the fellow isn’t there, I certainly think you ought to go to the police. In fact, I think you’ll have to.’
‘Yes, I think I must. The empty house settles that.’
‘Well, I hope to heaven he is at the hospital, that’s all, and then that will let you out.’
‘Yes, so do I. Good Lord! There’s old Firman in a car! Come on! He can give us a lift. Wonder what he’s up to round here? I expect he saw us go in.’
The car waited for them.
‘Why, Firman, you old ass!’ shouted Gascoigne, climbing in beside the driver. ‘Why on earth didn’t you join us last evening?’ O’Hara, surprised by the bonhomous nature of this greeting, for his cousin, so far as he knew, was not well acquainted with this particular member of their club and did not much like what he knew of him, waited for Firman’s reply.
‘I didn’t want to be roasted about not finishing,’ responded Firman, a round-shouldered man with eyes too old for his face. ‘My bones began to creak at the three-mile mark, so I packed up and went to my uncle’s house in Cuchester. What are you two doing, roaming so far off your beat? I should have thought bright lads like you would have been putting in a pleasant morning by the sea, and giving the girls a treat.’
‘We’re just out for a stroll,’ said Gascoigne, before O’Hara could answer. ‘Give us a lift to the nearest nice pub, and we’ll buy you a drink, old man.’
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Firman, ‘but I can’t stop, even for a drink. My uncle has his lunch at half-past twelve, and as I’m his heir I can’t afford to keep lunch waiting.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Hop in, and I’ll drop you at the Bell-Wether. That’s the best pub around here. Mention my name, and they’ll let you have anything you like and as much as ever you want.’