The Complete Works of R. Austin Freeman: Action Thrillers, Murder Mysteries & Detective Stories (Illustrated). R. Austin Freeman

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СКАЧАТЬ a turfy expanse seldom trodden by any feet but those of the sheep that grazed in the meadows bordering the pond. I leaned on the parapet, smoking my pipe with deep contentment, and looking down into the placid water. Flags and rushes grew at its borders, water-lilies spread their flat leaves on its surface, and a small party of urchins angled from the margin, with the keen joy of the juvenile sportsman who suspects that his proceedings are unlawful.

      I had lounged on the parapet for several minutes, when I became aware of a man, approaching along the indistinct track that crossed the viaduct, and, as he drew near, I recognized him as the keeper whom I had met in Ken Wood on the morning after my discovery of the body in Millfield Lane. I would have let him pass with a smile of recognition, but he had no intention of passing. Touching his hat politely, he halted, and, having wished me good-morning, remarked: "You didn't tell me, sir, what it was you were looking for that morning when I met you in the wood."

      "No," I replied, "but apparently, someone else has."

      "Well, sir, you see," he said, " the sergeant came up the next day with a plain-clothes man to have a look round, and, as the sergeant is an old acquaintance of mine, he gave me the tip as to what they were after. I am sorry, sir, you didn't tell me what you were looking for."

      "Why?" I asked.

      "Well," he replied, "we might have found something if we had looked while the tracks were fresh. Unfortunately there was a gale in the night that fetched down a lot of leaves, and blew up those that had already fallen, so that any foot-marks would have got hidden before the sergeant came."

      "What did the police officers seem to think about it?" I asked.

      "Why, to speak the truth," the keeper replied," they seemed to think it was all bogey."

      "Do you mean to say," I asked, "that they thought I had invented the whole story?"

      "Oh, no, sir," he replied, "not that. They believed you had seen a man lying in the lane, but they didn't believe that he was a dead man and they thought your imagination had misled you about the tracks."

      "Then, I suppose they didn't find anything?" said I.

      "No, they didn't, and I haven't been able to find anything myself, though I've had a good look round."

      And then, after a brief pause: "I wonder," he said, "if you would care to come up to the Wood and have a look at the place yourself."

      I considered for a moment. I had nothing to do for I was taking a day off, and the man's proposal sounded rather attractive. Finally, I accepted his offer, and we turned back together towards the Wood.

      Hampstead—the Hampstead of those days—was singularly rustic and remote. But, within the wood, it was incredible that the town of London actually lay within the sound of a church bell or the flight of a bullet. Along the shady paths, carpeted with moss and silvery lichen, overshadowed by the boughs of noble beeches; or in leafy hollows, with the humus of centuries under our feet, and the whispering silence of the woodland all around, we might have been treading the glades of some primeval forest. Nor was the effect of this strange remoteness less, when presently, emerging from the thicker portion of the wood, we came upon a moss-grown, half-ruinous boat-house on the sedgy margin of a lake, in which was drawn up a rustic-looking, and evidently, little-used punt.

      "It's wonderful quiet about here, sir," the keeper remarked, as a water-hen stole out from behind a clump of high rushes and scrambled over the leaves of the water-lilies.

      "And presumably," I remarked, "it's quieter still at night."

      "You're right, sir," the keeper replied. "If that man had got as far as this, he'd have had mighty little trouble in putting the body where no one was ever likely to look for it."

      "I suppose," said I, "that you had a good look at the edges of the lake?"

      "Yes," he answered. "I went right round it, and so did the police, for that matter, and we had a good look at the punt, too. But, all the same, it wouldn't surprise me if, one fine day, that body came floating up among the lilies; always supposing, that is," he added, "that there really was a body."

      "How far is it," I asked, "from the lake to the place where you met me that morning?"

      "It's only a matter of two or three minutes," he answered, "we may as well walk that way and you can see for yourself." Accordingly, we set forth together, and, coming presently upon one of the moss-grown paths, followed it past a large summerhouse until we came in sight of the beech beyond which I had encountered him while I was searching for the tracks. As we went, he plied me with questions as to what I had seen on the night in the lane, and I made no scruple of telling him all that I had told the police, seeing that they, on their side, had made no secret of the matter.

      Of course, it was idle, after this long period—for it was now more than seven weeks since I had seen the body—to attempt anything in the nature of a search. It certainly did look as if the man who had stolen into that wood that night had been bound for the solitary lake. The punt, I had noticed, was only secured with a rope, so that the murderer—for such I assumed he must have been—could easily have carried his dreadful burden out into the middle, and there sunk it with weights, and so hidden it for ever. It was a quick, simple and easy method of hiding the traces of his crime, and, if the police had not thought it worth while to search the water with drags, there was no reason why the buried secret should not remain buried for all time.

      After we had walked for some time about the pleasant, shady wood, less shady now that the yellowing leaves were beginning to fall with the passing of autumn, the keeper conducted me to the exit by which I had left on the previous occasion.

      As I was passing out of the wicket, my eye fell once more on the cottage which I had then noticed, and, recalling the remark that my fair acquaintance had let fall concerning the artist to whom the derelict knife was supposed to belong, I said: "You mentioned, I think, that that house was let to an artist."

      "It was," he replied; "but it's empty now, the artist has gone away."

      "It must be a pleasant little house to live in," I said, "at any rate, in summer."

      "Yes," he replied, "a country house within an hour's walk of the Bank of England. Would you like to have a look at it, sir? I've got the keys."

      Now I certainly had no intention of offering myself as a tenant, but, yet, to an idle man, there is a certain attractiveness in an empty house of an eligible kind, a certain interest in roaming through the rooms and letting one's fancy furnish them with one's own household goods. I accepted the man's invitation, and, opening the wide gate that admitted to the garden from a byroad, we walked up to the door of the house. "It's quite a nice little place," the keeper remarked. "There isn't much garden, you see, but then, you've got the Heath all around; and there's a small stable and coachhouse if you should be wanting to go into town."

      "Did the last tenant keep any kind of carriage?" I asked.

      "I don't think so," said the keeper, "but I fancy he used to hire a little cart sometimes when he had things to bring in from town; but I don't know very much about him or his habits."

      We walked through the empty rooms together, looking out of the windows and commenting on the pleasant prospects that all of them commanded, and talking about the man who had last lived in the house. "He was a queer sort of fellow," said the keeper. "He and his wife seem to have lived here all alone without any servant, and they seem often to have left the house to itself for a day or two at a time; but he could paint. I have stopped and had a look when he has been at work, and СКАЧАТЬ