They paid for their drinks with half-a-sovereign and wouldn't wait
for change.'
'Now I'll tell you what I want you to do,' I said. 'Get on your
bicycle and go off to Newton-Stewart to the Chief Constable. Describe
the two men, and say you suspect them of having had something to do
with the London murder. You can invent reasons. The two will come back,
never fear. Not tonight, for they'll follow me forty miles along the
road, but first thing tomorrow morning. Tell the police to be here
bright and early.'
He set off like a docile child, while I worked at Scudder's notes.
When he came back we dined together, and in common decency I
had to let him pump me. I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts
and the Matabele War, thinking all the while what tame businesses
these were compared to this I was now engaged in! When he went
to bed I sat up and finished Scudder. I smoked in a chair till
daylight, for I could not sleep.
About eight next morning I witnessed the arrival of two
constables and a sergeant. They put their car in a coach-house under the
innkeeper's instructions, and entered the house. Twenty minutes
later I saw from my window a second car come across the plateau
from the opposite direction. It did not come up to the inn, but
stopped two hundred yards off in the shelter of a patch of wood. I
noticed that its occupants carefully reversed it before leaving it.
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