The girl threw her book aside, and turned to him with obvious candour.

"I won't!" she exclaimed. "I'm not a bit afraid--though I don't know whatever you'll think of me, Mr. Brent, asking advice from a stranger in this barefaced fashion!"

"I've had to seek advice from strangers more than once in my time," said Brent, with a gentle laugh. "Go ahead!"

"It was knowing that you came from London," said Queenie. "You mightn't think it but I never met anybody before who came from London. And--I want to go to London. I will go!"

"Well," remarked Brent slowly, "if young people say they want to go to London, and declare that they will go to London, why, in my experience they end up by going. But, in your case, why not?"

The girl sat silent for a moment, staring straight in front of her at the blue smoke that circled up from the quaint chimney stacks of the town beneath the Castle. Her eyes grew dreamy.

"I want to go on the stage," she said at last. "That's it, Mr. Brent."

Brent turned and looked at her. Under his calm and critical inspection she blushed, but as she blushed she shook her head.

"Perhaps you think I'm one of the stage-struck young women?" she said.

"Perhaps you're wondering if I can act? Perhaps----"

"What I'm wondering," interrupted Brent, "is--if you know anything about it? Not about acting, but about the practical side of the thing--the profession? A pretty stiff proposition, you know."

"What I know," said Queenie Crood determinedly, "is that I've got a natural talent for acting. And I'd get on--if only I could get away from this place. I will get away!--if only somebody would give me a bit of advice about going to London and getting--you know--getting put in the way of it. I don't care how hard the life is, nor how hard I'd have to work--it would be what I want, and better than this anyway!"

"You aren't happy in this town?" suggested Brent.

Queenie gave an eloquent glance out of her dark eyes.

"Happy!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Shut up in that house with Simon Crood! Would you be? You saw something of it last night. Would you like to be mewed up there, day in, day out, year in, year out, with no company beyond him and those two cronies of his, who are as bad as himself--mean, selfish, money-grubbers! Oh!"

"Isn't your uncle good to you?" asked Brent with simple directness.

"He's been good enough in giving me bed and board and clothing since my father and mother died six years ago," answered the girl, "and in return I've saved him the wages of the two servants he ought to have. But do you think I want to spend all my life there, doing that sort of thing? I don't--and I won't! And I thought, when I heard that you were a London man, and a journalist, that you'd be able to tell me what to do--to get to London. Help me, Mr. Brent!"

She involuntarily held out her hands to him, and Brent just as involuntarily took them in his. He was a cool and not easily impressed young man, but his pulses thrilled as he felt the warm fingers against his own.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "If--if you can act like that----"

"I'm not acting!" she said quickly.

"Well, well, I didn't say you were," he answered with a laugh. "Only if you could--but of course I'll help you! I'll find out a thing or two for you: I don't know much myself, but I know people who do know. I'll do what I can."

The girl pressed his hands and withdrew her own.

"Thank you, thank you!" she said impulsively. "Oh, if you only knew how I want to get away--and breathe! That house----"

"Look here," interrupted Brent, "you're very candid. I like that--it suits me. Now, frankly you don't like that old uncle of yours? And just why?"

Queenie looked round. There was no one near them, no one indeed in sight, except a nursemaid who wheeled a perambulator along one of the paths, but she sunk her voice to something near a whisper.

"Mr. Brent," she said, "Simon Crood's the biggest hypocrite in this town--and that's implying a good deal more than you'd ever think. He and those friends of his, Mallett and Coppinger, who are always there with him--ah, they think I know nothing, and understand nothing, but I hear their schemings and their talk, veiled as it is. They're deep and subtle, those three--and dangerous. Didn't you see last night that if you'd sat there till midnight or till morning you'd never have had a word out of them--a word, that is, that you wanted? You wouldn't!--they knew better!"

"I got nothing out of them," admitted Brent. He sat thinking in silence for a time. "Look here," he said at last, "you know what I want to find out--who killed my cousin. Help me! Keep your eyes and ears open to anything you see and hear--understand?"

"I will!" answered Queenie. "But you've got a big task before you! You can be certain of this--if the Mayor was murdered for what you called political reasons----"

"Well?" asked Brent, as she paused. "Well?"

"It would all be arranged so cleverly that there's small chance of discovery," she went on. "I know this town--rotten to the core! But I'll help you all I can, and----"

A policeman suddenly came round the corner of the wall, and at sight of Brent touched his peaked cap.

"Looking for you, Mr. Brent," he said. "I heard you'd been seen coming up here. The superintendent would be obliged if you'd step round, sir; he wants to see you at once, particularly."

"Follow you in a moment," answered Brent. He turned to Queenie as the man went away. "When shall I see you again?" he asked.

"I always come here every afternoon," she answered. "It's the only change I get. I come here to read."

"Till to-morrow--or the next day, then," said Brent. He nodded and laughed. "Keep smiling! You'll maybe play Juliet, or some other of those old games, yet."

The girl smiled gratefully, and Brent strode away after the policeman.

In a few minutes he was in Hawthwaite's office. The superintendent closed the door, gave him a mysterious glance, and going over to a cupboard produced a long, narrow parcel, done up in brown paper.

"A discovery!" he whispered. "It occurred to me this afternoon to have all the heavy furniture in the Mayor's Parlour examined. No light job, Mr. Brent--but we found this."

And with a jerk of his wrist he drew from the brown paper a long, thin, highly polished rapier, the highly burnished steel of which was dulled along half its length, as if it had been first dimmed and then hastily rubbed.

"I make no doubt that this was what it was done with," continued Hawthwaite. "We found it thrust away between the wainscoting and a heavy bookcase which it took six men to move. And our deputy Town Clerk says that a few days ago he saw this lying on a side table in the Mayor's Parlour--his late Worship observed to him that it was an old Spanish rapier that he'd picked up at some old curiosity shop cheap."

"You'll go into that, and bring it in evidence?" suggested Brent.

"You bet!" replied Hawthwaite grimly. "Oh, we're not going to sleep, Mr.

Brent--we'll get at something yet! Slow and sure, sir, slow but sure."

Brent went away presently, and calling on Tansley, the solicitor, walked with him to Wallingford's rooms. During the next two hours they carefully examined all the dead man's private papers. They found nothing that threw any light whatever on his murder. But they came upon his will. Wallingford had left all he possessed to his cousin, Richard Brent, and by the tragedy of the previous night Brent found that he had benefited to the extent of some fifteen thousand pounds.

CHAPTER VI

THE ANCIENT OFFICE OF CORONER

The discovery of Wallingford's will, which lay uppermost amongst a small collection of private papers in a drawer of the dead man's desk, led Brent and Tansley into a new train of thought. Tansley, with the ready perception and ac.u.men of a man trained in the law, was quick to point out two or three matters which in view of Wallingford's murder seemed to be of high importance, perhaps of deep significance. Appended to the will was a schedule of the testator's properties and possessions, with the total value of the estate estimated and given in precise figures--that was how Brent suddenly became aware that he had come into a small fortune. Then the will itself was in holograph, written out in Wallingford's own hand on a single sheet of paper, in the briefest possible fashion, and witnessed by his two clerks. And, most important and significant of all, it had been executed only a week previously.

"Do you know how that strikes me?" observed Tansley in a low voice, as if he feared to be overheard. "It just looks to me as if Wallingford had antic.i.p.ated that something was about to happen. Had he ever given you any idea in his letters that he was going to do this?"

"Never!" replied Brent. "Still--I'm the only very near relative that he had."

"Well," said Tansley, "it may be mere coincidence, but it's a bit odd that he should be murdered within a week of that will's being made. I'd just like to know if he'd been threatened--openly, anonymously, any way.