He fumed and fretted with impatience during the six hours' journey down to Norcaster. It was ten o'clock when he arrived there, and as he knew that the last train to Scarhaven left at half-past-nine he hurried to get a fast motor-car that would take him over the last twenty miles of his journey. He had wired to Audrey from Peterborough, telling her that he was on his way and should motor out from Norcaster, and when he had found a car to his liking he ordered its driver to go straight to Mrs. Greyle's cottage, close by Scarhaven church. And just then he heard a voice calling his name, and turning saw, running out of the station, a young, athletic-looking man, much wrapped and cloaked, who waved a hand at him and whose face he had some dim notion of having seen before. "Mr. Copplestone?" panted the new arrival, coming up hurriedly. "I almost missed you--I got on the wrong platform to meet your train. You don't know me, though you may have seen me at the inquest on Mr. Bassett Oliver the other day--my name's Vickers--Guy Vickers." "Yes?" said Copplestone. "And--" "I'm a solicitor, here in Norcaster," answered Vickers. "I--at least, my firm, you know--we sometimes act for Mrs. Greyle at Scarhaven. I got a wire from Miss Greyle late this evening, asking me to meet you here when the London train got in and to go on to Scarhaven with you at once. She added the words _urgent business_ so--" "Then in heaven's name, let's be off!" exclaimed Copplestone. "It'll take us a good hour and a quarter as it is. Of course," he went on, as they moved away through the Norcaster streets, "of course, you haven't any notion of what this urgent business is?" "None whatever!" replied Vickers. "But I'm quite sure that it is urgent, or Miss Greyle wouldn't have said so. No--I don't know what her exact meaning was, but of course, I know there's something wrong about the whole thing at Scarhaven--seriously wrong!" "You do, eh?" exclaimed Copplestone. "What now?" "Ah, that I don't know!" replied Vickers, with a dry laugh. "I wish I did. But--you know how people talk in these provincial places--ever since that inquest there have been all sorts of rumours. Every club and public place in Norcaster has been full of talk--gossip, surmise, speculation. Naturally!" "But--about what?" asked Copplestone. "Squire Greyle, of course," said the young solicitor; "that inquest was enough to set the whole country talking. Everybody thinks--they couldn't think otherwise--that something is being hushed up. Everybody's agog to know if Sir Cresswell Oliver and Mr. Petherton are applying for a re-opening of the inquest. You've just come from town, I believe! Did you hear anything?"