“Um!” he remarked. “Might be a good deal in that—he might certainly have taken this place in his way between London and Southampton. But—the queer thing is, we can’t hit on a trace of his coming or going!” “Why did he never return to the Sceptre—where three pounds fourteen shillings change was due to him?” asked Walkinshaw. “I don’t know,” said the Chief Constable. “But I’m very sure of this—whoever he was, he didn’t board the early morning train from Selcaster to London, either at Selcaster or at Mitbourne, that particular morning. There were only five passengers went aboard at Selcaster, and two at Mitbourne, and the railway folks know every man jack of ’em!” “It’s not necessary to board a train to get into or out of a district,” observed Walkinshaw. “My own belief is that these two men came here and left here by motor-car.” The Chief Constable looked at Walkinshaw and grunted his dissent. “Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” he said. “I’ve had my men making enquiries of that sort all over the place! Every neighbouring village—every farmstead on the hill-sides! And—not one scrap of information.” “That doesn’t surprise me, nor affect what I say,” retorted Walkinshaw. “You know as well as I do that where we are now is about the middle of what we’ll call a triangle. On each of all three sides of us lies a big main road. On every one of these three roads there’s no end of motor traffic nowadays. I ought to know, for I live on one of them. I reckon there are at least forty cars of one sort or another pass my house every hour.” “Not first thing in the morning!” interrupted the Chief Constable sceptically. “I’m giving you an average,” said Walkinshaw. “From five o’clock onward, anyhow. Do you think one car would be noticed out of the hundreds that come and go? Rot!” “Where did they put their car while they came to the Sceptre?” asked the Chief Constable. “I see nothing difficult about that,” replied Walkinshaw. “I’d engage to hide any car, however big, in one of our byways or plantations, or in a convenient spot in the hollows of the downs, for a few hours, without anybody seeing it. A lonely district like this, and at night, too! Easy enough!” “If these two men came together in a car,” said Chilford, “why did one man present himself at Grimsdale’s at nine o’clock in the evening and the other at two o’clock in the morning?” “For that matter—if you’re going into whys and wherefores,” retorted Walkinshaw, “where did the first man go when he walked out of the Sceptre’s door after first going there? He was away until close on eleven o’clock. Where had he been?” “Well, we’ve gone into that, too!” said the Chief Constable, almost defiantly. “There isn’t a soul in the village who saw any stranger at all that night!” “But no one knew of him till Grimsdale had testified.”