I found nothing specially mysterious in that. It was common sense to disappear and cover his tracks when he could not tell exactly what trap he had escaped and whether it was a trap at all. I guessed that he had walked to the A 5 road and got himself home from there — though it seemed risky. That, if anywhere, was where the police block would be.

“Where’s the spade, Dad?” asked the elder daughter, interrupting us.

“Back of the shed. Under them mole traps.”

“No, ‘t ain’t. And we want to dig some clay like the gentleman told us.”

“Well, if ‘t ain’t, it’s where you blasted little darlin’s put it. Last Saturday they slings all their old dolls in a bonfire,” he went on, “and near burns up the pitchfork till their ma has to tell ‘em that girls aren’t never devils. Not in ‘ell, that is.”

Mrs. Melton called us all in to eat sausage and mash, the jackdaw on the table and helping with the mash. She asked no questions. She could mind her own business as well as her husband. They must have been certain of their daughters, too, for they did not care what was revealed in front of them.

“What we want to know now,” said Jim, “is what excuse he gave old Fred Gorble for leaving the ‘orse there all day. Him and his two little ‘f’s’! Two big uns I’d call him!”

“I’ll get that out of Fred,” Mrs. Melton remarked.

There must have been long agreement between Mr. and Mrs. Melton as to their respective spheres of operation. Her offer, without another word, seemed to open his eyes.

“Women!” he exclaimed. “Fred’s no fool, and he don’t like standing up in the box any more than anyone else. That fforde-Crankshaw, he comes ridin’ in looking as stately as a master of ‘ounds and not troublin’ his ‘ead about crime what you’d call crime. So what could he have told Fred? That he was out tom-cattin’ of course! He didn’t want anyone to know as he’d been over this way, and especially not her ‘usband. I’ll drive the missus round to Fred, and she’ll get it out of him like she said she would.”

After supper Mrs. Melton put on a formidable hat, and we went across the kitchen garden to the shed — a store or ammunition hut which Jim had picked up from the army and which now served as garage and barn. Its long axis was set obliquely to the cottage and the door faced more or less up the road.

Inside were piles of useful junk and an incredible vehicle with a shining bonnet —black, powerful, looking as if it were an amateur conversion of one of the royal landaulettes into a van.

“It’s a ‘earse,” Jim explained. “Comes a bit ‘ard on petrol. But that’s an income tax expense. I’m a farmer, see? Got more than five acres, I have, here and there.”

Mr. and Mrs. Melton got in, and the hearse burst out into the road. It was Jim’s method of entering and leaving his garage and may have accounted for the angle at which he set it. No doubt he compensated for his dislike of military service by imagining himself a cowboy in a hurry or a cavalier carrying news to the king.

I was left to entertain the Miss Meltons. A shower drove us indoors and limited the amusements I could provide. There was not a book in the house, so we turned to a paintbox. Caricatures of authority in the shape of schoolteachers and policemen were so popular that for an hour there was silence except for recommendations to make the backside bigger or the nose redder.

Our peace was broken by the jackdaw’s strident call of greeting. The bird seemed to be acting efficiently as watchdog till the new puppy grew up. One of the Miss Meltons looked out of the front window, but there was nobody about. The rain had just started to pelt down and heavy thunderclouds had brought an early dusk.

“Practicing — that’s what he’s doing,” she said, “unless someone has brought the spade back.”

“Dad’s hid it so we can’t bust it,” replied the other contemptuously. “Who’s goin’ to walk mile ‘n ‘alf to borrow a spade?”

No one. I agreed. But if somebody was already here and saw the spade, I could imagine a use for it. Impossible, however. I could not be traced to the Meltons’ cottage. The connection between myself and Jim was absolutely undiscoverable — unless the dark stranger hadn’t gone to London at all and had been hanging around Hernsholt that very day. And I knew he had not. There would have been an immediate report to Ferrin, and from Ferrin to Ian or me.

“Is there anything like a tip of loose rubbish or a sandpit near here?” I asked.

“Top of the slope behind the shed. Good sand, too. Dad’ll sell you a load if you want it.”

I got up and drew the curtains. Jackdaw’s chatter and missing spades were no evidence of anything at all. All the same, I did not intend to go out until Jim was back with us. If meanwhile somebody knocked at the door and asked for shelter from the rain — there was no earthly reason why he shouldn’t — I would have to get the children out of the room and tell him to keep his hands up while we talked.

It was nearly ten before the Meltons returned — with the same technique. I never even heard Jim change down. He reined the hearse back on its haunches with six inches between the bumpers and a wheelbarrow.

Mr. and Mrs. Melton were thoroughly relaxed by double whiskies, and cackling over their success. On arrival at Gorble’s retreat, Jim had kept firmly in his part of driver, saying that he wouldn’t come in, that his old woman wouldn’t confide in him what it was all about and he didn’t want to know either.

As soon as she was alone with Fred, Mrs. Melton told him that a lady had given her an urgent message for he-knew-who. Gorble showed no surprise, which proved that she was on the right lines. He said that the gentleman wasn’t coming back.

Mrs. Melton had then clothed herself in vague gipsy portentousness and delivered a warning that no good would come of it all. She invented a husband who was due back unexpectedly on Saturday from the Assizes. I gathered from her incoherent chuckles that he hadn’t been in the dock but was one of Her Majesty’s Judges.

This frightened Gorble into indecision. He admitted that he could pass a message, but refused. It wasn’t worth his while, he said. The gentleman had paid him well, and there was more money promised if orders were obeyed. Fred expected to receive a telephone call —he wouldn’t say where or when —and was forbidden to open his mouth at all except to give the answers to two questions: yes or no.

Eventually, to get rid of her, he told her what the two questions were. Had anybody been making inquiries? Was a certain person still living where he did?

“Ah, him at the Warren!” Mrs. Melton exclaimed.

That apparently satisfied Gorble that she knew more about the business than he did. He said he didn’t care to be hanging around Hernsholt asking silly questions, and would she get the information for him?

The pair of them waved away my thanks and apologized for stopping on the road. They reckoned I’d be glad to see them.

“We ‘aven’t give him no trouble,” protested the eldest daughter. “We’ve been ‘aving fun.”

“Aye. In the shed. I can see that,” said Jim severely. “One day you’ll get ‘urt burrowin’ in all that junk.”

“What’s the matter with the shed?” I asked.

“Knocked down a tarpaulin and bust a flowerpot.”

“Let’s go and see.”

As soon as I had Jim outside, I told him we had never been in the shed and stopped him going straight to it.

“Did you lock the door when you put the van away?”

“I did. Somebody in there, you think?”

It was most unlikely; but if the rain had driven an observer down into the shed for shelter, Jim’s sudden and dashing return would certainly have startled him. He had no time to get out of the door but he could have dived into the litter of odds and ends at the back.

“Switch the light on,” I said, “and don’t come any further. And don’t say anything which could give away what we’re doing — make out we’re looking for a handy plank.”