Hathelsborough suddenly became flooded with handbills and posters, each bearing a few pithy words in enormous type. These effusions were for the most part in the form of questions, addressed to the recipients; there was a cynical and sinister sneer in all of them. "Who _is_ Mr. Brent?"

"Why Support a Stranger?" "Who Wants a Carpet-Bagger?" "Vote for the Home-Made Article." "Hathelsborough Men for Hathelsborough Matters."

"Stand by the True and Tried!" These appeals to the free and enlightened burgesses whose suffrages he solicited met Brent on every side, and especially on the day of the election. He had gone in for nothing of this sort himself: his original election address, it seemed to him, contained everything that he had to say, and beyond posting it all over the town in great placards and distributing it in the form of handbills to the electors of the Castle Ward he had issued nothing in the shape of literature. But he had stumped his desired const.i.tuency thoroughly, making speeches at every street corner and at every public meeting-place, and he had a personal conviction from his usual reception on these occasions that the people were with him. He was still sure of victory when, at noon on the polling-day, he chanced to meet Tansley.

"Going strong, as far as I can make out," he answered, in response to the solicitor's inquiry. "I've been about all the morning, and from what I've seen and what my Committee tell me, I'm in!"

Tansley shook his head.

"Look here, my lad," he said, drawing Brent aside as they stood together in the market-place, "don't you build too high! They're working against you to-day, the Crood gang, as they never worked in their lives! They're bringing every influence they can get hold of against you. And--you haven't been over wise."

"What have I done now?" demanded Brent.

"Those articles that are appearing in the _Monitor_," replied Tansley.

"Everybody knows they're yours. Do you think there's a soul in Hathelsborough who believes that Peppermore could write them? Now, they're a mistake! They may be true----"

"They are true!" growled Brent.

"Granted! But, however true they are, they're an attack on Hathelsborough," said Tansley. "Now, of whatever political colour they are, Hathelsborough folk are Hathelsborough folk, and they're prouder of this old town than you know. Look round you, my lad; there isn't a stone that you can see that wasn't just where it is now hundreds of years before you were born. Do you think these people like to hear you, a stranger, criticizing their old customs, old privileges, as you are doing in those articles? Not a bit of it! They're asking who you are to come judging them. You'd have done a lot better, Brent, if you'd been a bit diplomatic. You should have left all politics and reforms out of it, and tried to win the seat simply on your relationship to Wallingford.

You could have shown your cards when you'd got in--you've shown 'em too soon!"

"That be d.a.m.ned!" said Brent. "I've played the game straightforwardly anyhow. I don't want any underhand business--there's enough of that in this rotten place now. And I still think I shall be in!"

But before the summer evening had progressed far, Brent learnt that the vested interests of an ancient English borough are stronger than he thought. He was hopelessly defeated--only rather more than a hundred voters marked their papers for him. His opponent was returned by a big majority. He got a new idea when he heard the result, and went straight off to Peppermore and the _Monitor_ with it. They would go on with the articles, and make them of such a nature that the Local Government Board in London would find it absolutely necessary to give prompt and searching attention to Hathelsborough and its affairs.

CHAPTER XVIII

LOOSE STRANDS

By business time next morning Brent had cast aside all thought of the previous day's proceedings and of his defeat at the hands of the Old Gang, and had turned to affairs which were now of far more importance.

He had three separate enterprises in hand; to be sure, they were all related, but each had a distinctive character of its own. He specified all three as he ate his breakfast at the _Chancellor_, where he was still located. First, now that he had done with his electioneering--for the time being--he was going to work harder than ever at the task of discovering Wallingford's murderer. Secondly, he was going to marry Queenie, and that speedily. Queenie and he had settled matters to their mutual satisfaction as soon as the row with Uncle Simon Crood was over, and they had already begun furnishing the house which Brent had bought in order to const.i.tute himself a full-fledged burgess of Hathelsborough.

Thirdly, he was going to put all he knew into the articles which he was writing for the _Monitor_--two had already appeared; he was going on writing them until public opinion, gradually educated, became too strong for the reactionary forces that had beaten him yesterday but which he would infallibly defeat to-morrow, or, if not to-morrow, the day after.

And first the murderer. He fetched Queenie from Mrs. Appleyard's that morning, and, utterly careless of the sly looks that were cast on him and her, marched her through the market-place to Hawthwaite's office at the police station. To Hawthwaite, keenly interested, he detailed particulars of Queenie's discovery about the typewritten letter and produced her proofs. Hawthwaite took it all in silently.

"You'll have to go into that, you know," concluded Brent. "Now that I've got through with that election I'm going to give more time to this business. We've got to find out who killed my cousin, Hawthwaite, somehow--it's not going to rest. I won't leave a stone unturned! And there," he added, pointing to the sheet of paper on which Queenie had made specimens of the broken type of Simon's antiquated machine, "is a stone which needs examining on all four sides!"

Hawthwaite picked up the sheet of paper, twisted it in his big fingers, and looked over it at the two young people with a quizzical smile.

"I understand that you and Miss Queenie there are contemplating matrimony, Mr. Brent?" he remarked. "That so, sir?"

"That's so," replied Brent promptly. "As soon as we've got our house furnished we'll be married."

"Then I can speak freely and in confidence before Mrs. Brent that's to be," responded Hawthwaite, with another smile. "Well, now, what you've just told me isn't exactly fresh news to me! I'll show you something."

He turned, drew out a drawer from a chest behind his chair, and finding a paper in it took it out and handed it to his visitors. "Look at that, now!" he said. "You see what it is?"

Brent saw at once. It was a half-sheet of notepaper, on which were examples of faulty type, precisely similar to those on Queenie's bit of evidence.

"h.e.l.lo!" exclaimed Brent. "Somebody else been at the same game, eh?"

"I'll tell you," answered Hawthwaite, settling himself in his chair.

"It's a bit since--let us think, now--yes, it would be a day or two after that facsimile appeared in the _Monitor_ that a young man came to me here one evening: respectable artisan sort of chap. He told me that he was in the employ of a typewriter company at Clothford, which, Mr.

Brent, as Miss Queenie there knows, is our big town, only a few miles away. He said that he'd come to tell me something in confidence. The previous day, he said, Mr. Crood, of Hathelsborough, had come to their place in Clothford and had brought with him an old-fashioned typewriter which, he told them, he had bought when such things first came out. He wanted to know the thing being, he said, an old favourite--if they couldn't do it up for him, go through its mechanism thoroughly, supply new letters, and so on. They said they could. He left it to be done, and it was handed over to this young man. Now then, this young man, my informant, has some relations here in Hathelsborough; a day or so before Simon Crood called with his machine, they sent him--the young man--a copy of the _Monitor_ with this facsimile letter enclosed. Being concerned with such things in his trade, he was naturally interested in the facsimile, and of course, as an expert, he noticed the broken letters. However, he didn't connect the facsimile with Crood's machine at first. But, happening to look at that machine more narrowly, to see exactly what had to be done to it, he--as he phrased it--ran off the keys on a sheet of paper, and he then saw at once that he had before him the identical machine on which the threatening letter to our late Mayor had been typed! And so he came to me!"

"What have you done about it?" asked Brent.

Hawthwaite gave him a knowing look.

"Well, I'll tell you that too," he answered. "I've got the machine! It's there--in that box in the corner. The Clothford firm will make an excuse to Mr. Crood that they've had to send this machine away for repairs--eh?

Of course I'm not going to let it out of my possession until--well, until we know more."

"There's no doubt he wrote that threatening letter," observed Brent.

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt whatever," agreed Hawthwaite.

"What about that handkerchief and the inquiry at the laundry?" asked Brent.

Hawthwaite accompanied his reply with a nod and a wink.

"That's being followed up," he said. "Don't ask me any more now; we're progressing, and, I believe, in the right direction this time. Do you leave it to us, Mr. Brent; you'll be surprised before long and so will some other folks. You go on with those articles you've started in the _Monitor_. It doesn't do for me to say much, being an official," he added, with another wink, "but you'll do some good in that way--there's a lot under the surface in this old town, sir, that only needs exposing to the light of day to ensure destruction! Public opinion, Mr. Brent, public opinion! You stir it up, and leave this matter to me; I may be slow, Mr. Brent, but I'll surely get there in the end!"

"Good! It's all I ask," said Brent. "Only get there!"

He took Queenie away, but before they had gone many steps from the superintendent's office Hawthwaite called Brent back, and leading him inside the room closed the door on him.

"Your young lady'll not mind waiting a minute or two," he said, with a significant glance. "As she already knew about old Simon's typewriter, I didn't mind telling that I knew, d'ye see? But there's another little matter that I'd like to tell you about--between ourselves, and to go no further, you understand?"

"Just so," agreed Brent.

"Well," continued Hawthwaite, "there may be nothing in it. But I've always had a suspicion that there was nothing definite got out of either Dr. Wellesley or Mrs. Saumarez about their--well, I won't say love affairs, but relations. Anyway, that there was something mysterious about the sort of three-cornered relations between her and Wellesley and your cousin I'm as dead certain as that I see you! I've an idea too that somehow or other those relations have something to do with your cousin's murder. But now, this is it--you know, I dare say, that at the back of Mrs. Saumarez's garden at the Abbey House, there's a quiet, narrow lane, little used?"

"I know it," replied Brent. "Farthing Lane."

"Just so, and why so called none of our local antiquaries know," said Hawthwaite. "Well, not so many nights ago I had some business in that lane, at a late hour--I was watching for somebody, as a matter of fact, though it came to nothing. I was in a secret place, just as it was getting nicely dark. Now then, who should come along that lane but Krevin Crood!"

"Krevin Crood!" exclaimed Brent. "Ay?"

"Krevin Crood," repeated Hawthwaite. "And thinks I to myself, 'What may you be doing here, my lad, at this hour of the night?' For as you know that lane, Mr. Brent, you'll know that on one side of it there's nothing but the long wall of Mrs. Saumarez's garden and grounds, and on the other a belt of trees that shuts off Robinson's market-garden and orchards. I was safe hidden amongst those trees. Well, Krevin came along--I recognized him well enough. He sort of loitered about, evidently waiting for somebody. And just as the parish church clock struck ten I heard the click of a latch, and the door in Mrs. Saumarez's back garden opened, and a woman came out! I knew her too."

"Not Mrs. Saumarez?" suggested Brent.

"No," replied Hawthwaite. "Not Mrs. Saumarez. But that companion of hers, Mrs. Elstrick. Tall, thin, very reserved woman; you may have noticed that she goes about the town very quietly--never talks to anybody."

"I've scarcely noticed her except when she was here in court with Mrs.

Saumarez," replied Brent. "But I know the woman you mean. So it was she?"

"Just so--Mrs. Elstrick," said Hawthwaite. "And I saw, of course, that this was a put-up job, an arranged meeting between her and Krevin. They met, turned, walked up and down the lane together for a good ten minutes, talking in whispers. They pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed me several times, and I'd have given a good deal to hear what they were talking about. But I couldn't catch a word--they were on the opposite side of the lane, you see, close to the garden wall."