"Sorry I am, sir, that your first visit to my establishment should be under such painful circumstances," he said unctuously. "I hope you'll favour me with another talk, sir--always pleased to see a London gentleman, I'm sure--we're behind, perhaps, in these parts, Mr. Brent, but honest and hearty, sir, honest and hearty. Queenie, my love, you'll open the door for the young gentleman?" The girl took Brent into the gloomy hall. Halfway along its shadows, she suddenly turned on him with a half shy, half daring expression. "You are from London?" she whispered. "From London?--yes," said Brent. "Why?" "I want to--to talk to somebody about London," she went on, with a nervous, backward glance at the door they had just left. "May I--will you let me talk to--you?" "To be sure!" answered Brent. "But when--where?" "I go into the Castle grounds every afternoon," she answered timidly. "Could--could you come there--some time?" "To-morrow afternoon?" suggested Brent. "Say three o'clock? Would that do?" "Yes," she whispered. "Thank you--I'll be there. It seems--queer, but I'll tell you. Thank you again--you'll understand to-morrow." She had her hand on the big street door by then. Without more words she let him out into the night; he heard the door close heavily behind him. He went back towards the heart of the little town, wondering. Only a few hours before, he had been in the rush and bustle of Fleet Street, and now, here he was, two hundred miles away, out of the world, and faced with an atmosphere of murder and mystery. CHAPTER IV BULL'S SNUG When Brent came again to the centre of the town he found that Hathelsborough, instead of sinking to sleep within an hour of curfew, according to long-established custom, had awakened to new life. There were groups at every corner, and little knots of folk at doors, and men in twos and threes on the pavement, and it needed no particular stretching of his ears to inform him that everybody was talking of the murder of his cousin. He caught fragmentary bits of surmise and comment as he walked along; near a shadowy corner of the great church he purposely paused, pretending to tie his shoe-lace, in order to overhear a conversation between three or four men who had just emerged from the door of an adjacent tavern, and were talking in loud, somewhat excited tones: working men, these, whose speech was in the vernacular. "You can bet your life 'at this job's been done by them whose little game Wallingford were going to checkmate!" declared one man. "I've allus said 'at he were running a rare old risk. We know what t' old saying is about new brooms sweeping clean--all very well, is that, but ye can smash a new broom if ye use it over vigorously. Wallingford were going a bit too deeply into t' abuses o' this town--an' he's paid t' penalty. Put out o' t' way--that's t' truth on it!"