The Middle Temple Murder - J. S. Fletcher (reading women .TXT) 📗

I can’t tell you where I got it just now, but I’ll promise you that I will tell you, and all about it, too, as soon as my tongue’s free to do so.”

“Some mystery, eh?” suggested Crowfoot.

“Considerable,” answered Spargo. “Don’t mention to anyone that I showed it to you. You shall know everything eventually.”

“Oh, all right, my boy, all right!” said Crowfoot. “Odd how things turn up, isn’t it? Now, I’ll wager anything that there aren’t half a dozen of these old things outside Market Milcaster itself. As I said, there were only fifty, and they were all in possession of burgesses. They were so much thought of that they were taken great care of. I’ve been in Market Milcaster myself since the races were given up, and I’ve seen these tickets carefully framed and hung over mantelpieces⁠—oh, yes!”

Spargo caught at a notion.

“How do you get to Market Milcaster?” he asked.

“Paddington,” replied Crowfoot. “It’s a goodish way.”

“I wonder,” said Spargo, “if there’s any old sporting man there who could remember⁠—things. Anything about this ticket, for instance?”

“Old sporting man!” exclaimed Crowfoot. “Egad!⁠—but no, he must be dead⁠—anyhow, if he isn’t dead, he must be a veritable patriarch. Old Ben Quarterpage, he was an auctioneer in the town, and a rare sportsman.”

“I may go down there,” said Spargo. “I’ll see if he’s alive.”

“Then, if you do go down,” suggested Crowfoot, “go to the old ‘Yellow Dragon’ in the High Street, a fine old place. Quarterpage’s place of business and his private house were exactly opposite the ‘Dragon.’ But I’m afraid you’ll find him dead⁠—it’s five and twenty years since I was in Market Milcaster, and he was an old bird then. Let’s see, now. If Old Ben Quarterpage is alive, Spargo, he’ll be ninety years of age!”

“Well, I’ve known men of ninety who were spry enough, even in my bit of experience,” said Spargo. “I know one⁠—now⁠—my own grandfather. Well, the best of thanks, Crowfoot, and I’ll tell you all about it some day.”

“Have another drink?” suggested Crowfoot.

But Spargo excused himself. He was going back to the office, he said; he still had something to do. And he got himself away from the Octoneumenoi, in spite of Starkey, who wished to start a general debate on the wisest way of expending the club’s ready money balance, and went back to the Watchman, and there he sought the presence of the editor, and in spite of the fact that it was the busiest hour of the night, saw him and remained closeted with him for the extraordinary space of ten minutes. And after that Spargo went home and fell into bed.

But next morning, bright and early, he was on the departure platform at Paddington, suitcase in hand, and ticket in pocket for Market Milcaster, and in the course of that afternoon he found himself in an old-fashioned bedroom looking out on Market Milcaster High Street. And there, right opposite him, he saw an ancient house, old brick, ivy-covered, with an office at its side, over the door of which was the name, Benjamin Quarterpage.

XVI The “Yellow Dragon”

Spargo, changing his clothes, washing away the dust of his journey, in that old-fashioned lavender-scented bedroom, busied his mind in further speculations on his plan of campaign in Market Milcaster. He had no particularly clear plan. The one thing he was certain of was that in the old leather box which the man whom he knew as John Marbury had deposited with the London and Universal Safe Deposit Company, he and Rathbury had discovered one of the old silver tickets of Market Milcaster racecourse, and that he, Spargo, had come to Market Milcaster, with the full approval of his editor, in an endeavour to trace it. How was he going to set about this difficult task?

“The first thing,” said Spargo to himself as he tied a new tie, “is to have a look round. That’ll be no long job.”

For he had already seen as he approached the town, and as he drove from the station to the “Yellow Dragon” Hotel, that Market Milcaster was a very small place. It chiefly consisted of one long, wide thoroughfare⁠—the High Street⁠—with smaller streets leading from it on either side. In the High Street seemed to be everything that the town could show⁠—the ancient parish church, the town hall, the market cross, the principal houses and shops, the bridge, beneath which ran the river whereon ships had once come up to the town before its mouth, four miles away, became impassably silted up. It was a bright, clean, little town, but there were few signs of trade in it, and Spargo had been quick to notice that in the “Yellow Dragon,” a big, rambling old hostelry, reminiscent of the old coaching days, there seemed to be little doing. He had eaten a bit of lunch in the coffee-room immediately on his arrival; the coffee-room was big enough to accommodate a hundred and fifty people, but beyond himself, an old gentleman and his daughter, evidently tourists, two young men talking golf, a man who looked like an artist, and an unmistakable honeymooning couple, there was no one in it. There was little traffic in the wide street beneath Spargo’s windows; little passage of people to and fro on the sidewalks; here a countryman drove a lazy cow as lazily along; there a farmer in his light cart sat idly chatting with an aproned tradesman, who had come out of his shop to talk to him. Over everything lay the quiet of the sunlight of the summer afternoon, and through the open windows stole a faint, sweet scent of the new-mown hay lying in the meadows outside the old houses.

“A veritable Sleepy Hollow,” mused Spargo. “Let’s go down and see if there’s anybody to talk to. Great Scott!⁠—to think that I was in the poisonous atmosphere of the Octoneumenoi only sixteen hours ago!”

Spargo, after losing himself in various corridors and passages, finally landed in the wide,