Mr. Johnson subsided once more into the easy-chair from which he had risen.

“This is most amazing!” he exclaimed. “A murder in the Great House only twelve months ago!”

“It do seem most unaccountable, sir,” the grocer ventured, “that you never heard about it.”

“I was abroad at the time and until a month or so ago,” Mr. Johnson explained, “and it is astonishing how you lose touch with things altogether after a while. I sometimes didn’t open an English newspaper for a week at a time.—Well, well,” he went on, “perhaps that’s the reason why they asked such an extraordinarily low rent for the house.”

“It’s a-many,” the innkeeper observed, “who wouldn’t live there rent free—not that I’m saying that any educated person ought to take notice of such,” he added hastily. “It’s a fine house and the gardens are grand, and I only hope, sir, that you’ll be comfortable and not be put off, so to speak, by a thing that’s passed and gone.”

“And you say that the police have never even made an arrest,” Mr. Johnson asked incredulously. “Surely that’s a very unusual thing in this country?”

“Unusual it may be,” the innkeeper admitted, “but a fact it is, all the same. For weeks afterwards we had gentlemen from Scotland Yard almost living in the place. One stayed here in this very inn and the questions he did ask were surely ridiculous. But there wasn’t one of them clever enough to find out who killed Mr. Endacott.”

The new tenant of the Great House finished his drink in silence and rose to his feet.

“Well, gentlemen,” he observed, “I strolled in here to make friends with any of my new neighbours who might be around and make acquaintance with the place, so to speak, but I certainly didn’t expect to hear anything like this.”

“It’s a bad start, I’m afraid, sir,” the innkeeper regretted civilly, “but you’d have been bound to have heard of it before long.”

“Such a stir it did make,” the grocer reflected. “Every morning and every afternoon there was a fresh rumour, as you might say.”

“But not a single arrest,” Mr. Johnson repeated. “Most extraordinary!”

“I hope now that you know the worst as is to be told, sir,” Rawson ventured, “that you’ll soon settle down here and like the neighbourhood.”

Mr. Johnson inclined his head gravely.

“I have no doubt that I shall,” he declared. “In many respects the Great House suits me perfectly. It is just the sort of garden I want to have, the neighbourhood seems healthy, and it is not too far from the sea. I wish you good afternoon, gentlemen!”

There was a little chorus of farewells. The new tenant took his departure, swinging his stick and, though naturally a little thoughtful after the news he had heard, there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he intended to take it too seriously to heart. They watched him from behind the muslin curtains until he opened the gate which led into his gardens and disappeared.

“He do seem to me to have plenty of courage, and a proper man for the neighbourhood,” the innkeeper pronounced, wiping up his counter. “There is a-many might have been struck all of a heap at being told what we had to tell him.”

“Any sort of tenant is better than none,” the grocer sighed, “but a family, I must confess, is what I was hoping for.”

Rawson, as became his position, maintained a somewhat dubious attitude.

“I could wish,” he observed, with a heavy frown, “that he had given us some indication as to his previous occupation or station in life. His coming in here and sitting down for a drink was friendly-like but not exactly usual. To me he seemed scarcely the sort of man whom the Squire, for instance, would be likely to take a fancy to.”

“The Squire be a great gentleman,” the grocer said reverently. “There aren’t many like him left in these parts. He’s not likely to take up with a stranger. Why should he?”

“Why, indeed?” Rawson assented. “Yet he seemed to take quite a fancy to Mr. Endacott. Mr. Gregory, too, paid the young lady quite a lot of attention.”

“And no wonder,” the innkeeper remarked. “She was a proper-looking young lady. There ain’t many in these parts could hold a candle to her for looks. You’re not very gay just now at the Hall, Mr. Rawson,” he continued.

The butler stifled a regretful sigh. Things at the Hall were a great deal less gay than he was prepared to disclose.

“We’re generally pretty quiet during the summer,” he admitted. “The Squire was never one for entertaining much before the shooting. I did think that Mr. Gregory being at home might have made a little difference, but he’s due, they say, to start for foreign parts at any moment.—Six o’clock, gentlemen. I wish you all good evening.”

There was a simultaneous break-up of the little party. Rawson, ponderous as ever and grey of complexion, notwithstanding his country life, first made a dignified exit, and, walking a short way down the village street, climbed the stile which led into the park. Mr. Craske crossed the street and returned to the pleasant-looking, creeper-covered establishment behind the long shop windows of which he and his father and grandfather before him had dispensed groceries and gossip for the last hundred years. Finally the young man, Fielding, took his silent departure, mounting a motor bicycle which he had left leaning up against the wall. He glanced at his watch and reflected for a few moments.

“Be going for a ride, Mr. Fielding?” the innkeeper, who had followed him outside, enquired.

The young man looked up and down the sleepy sun-baked street, and glanced at a signboard where the road forked.

“I may get as far as Norwich,” he ruminated. “I’m wanting some new flies.”

“A pleasant ride and all this evening,” the other observed. “Queer it do seem these days to think of getting to Norwich and back afore dark. Them things as you ride have made a power of difference in getting about.”

The young man smiled.

“Twenty miles to Norwich,” he remarked. “Forty minutes, taking it easy. Yes, I think I shall run over there.”

He swung on to his machine, which started at once, and in three quarters of an hour he was writing out a telegram in a post office in Norwich. Afterwards he made a pilgrimage to a sporting emporium in the main street, and with the care of an expert selected a fresh assortment of flies with which to tempt a particularly elusive but desirable trout. Eight o’clock was striking as he passed once more through the village street of Market Ballaston on his way back to his farmhouse lodgings. He dismounted outside the Ballaston Arms and stood looking about him with the air of one absorbing to the full the gentle atmosphere of peace, beauty and rustic content.

At the end of the street, a row of houses, mostly of grey stone with deep red tiles, opened out into the little market place, where an ancient covered cross stood in the centre of a cobbled space. On a stone trough three or four youths and two young women were seated in peaceful and almost aggressive silence. Mr. Houghton, the bank manager, was standing on the cool flagged pavement outside his neat little house, smoking a cigarette and chatting with Foulds, the veterinary surgeon, who had just driven up in his little two-seater car, whilst just across the way, Mr. Craske’s good-looking daughter had stepped out of the front door to water the row of geraniums in the boxes before the windows. From the Great House, set in somewhat severe isolation behind its encircling red brick wall, came the clamorous summons of a dinner gong, and almost immediately afterwards a similar invitation from the tinkling of Chinese bells sounded from the Little House. The melody from the latter had scarcely died away before, from the Hall, came the slow booming of the alarm bell, rung nightly at the dinner hour.

The young man listened and into his sleepy eyes there crept a speculative expression as they travelled beyond the village street, beyond the park, up the great grass-bordered avenue towards the windows of the Hall. It seemed almost as though he could see into the very stately and undisturbed Jacobean dining room, see the three men who sat together at the end of that desert of mahogany, frowned down upon by lines of pictured ancestors, their slightest need anticipated by Rawson and his well-trained subordinates, as though he could hear their languid and stilted efforts at conversation, as though, perhaps, he could see the ghosts behind their chairs. As though, when he swung round a moment or two later, he could see into the more modest but still impressive dining room of the Great House, where Mr. Peter Johnson sat alone, before a far simpler repast, eating and drinking with a frown upon his forehead, and lines about his mouth, no traces of which had appeared during those more genial moments of his afternoon visit to the Ballaston Arms; as though, turning still a little farther round, he could see even into that quaint low dining room of the Little House, take note of the invalid with golden hair and weary brown eyes, who lay upon her long chair, drawn up by the side of the round table, the discontented but earnest young woman who sat opposite to her, the harsh-featured maid, their sole attendant.

In the end he sighed and abandoned his reflections. He entered the inn, disturbing thereby Mr. Pank, the landlord, in the middle of his supper, and drank a glass of gin and tonic. Then the quick explosions of his bicycle disturbed once more the quiet, drowsy street, as he flashed through the village on his homeward way.

Throughout the whole of that long summer day it had scarcely seemed possible that there could be a more peaceful spot in the world than the wide street, the cobbled market place, and the winding country lanes which emptied themselves into the village of Market Ballaston. At three o’clock on the following morning there was not only peace but silence, absolute and complete. The two hundred and forty-three men, women and children who made up its inhabitants, had passed into the land of ghosts. Even the houses themselves, with their closed blinds and sightless windows, breathed the very spirit of repose. The chiming of the church clock, notwithstanding its silvery distinctness, seemed to carry with it a note almost of apology to a sleeping world. Silence more complete than ever followed the dying away of its last trembling note. For some time not even an uneasy dog or a too eager denizen of the farmyard ventured to disturb the moonlit pall of silence. Then came the first sign of human movement.

The small postern gate set in the red brick wall which surrounded the Great House was opened noiselessly and Peter Johnson stepped into the lane. He stood there for a moment or two perfectly still, with the air of a man listening—a hopeless task, it seemed, on such a night. Whilst he listened, his eyes wandered up and down the street, away across the churchyard and into the wood behind, past the steeple and over the sleeping country to the horizon. It seemed, however, that if he watched for any unusual sight or listened for any unusual sounds, both efforts were in vain. After a few moments he took another step forward and, with the postern gate still open, stood gazing thoughtfully and watchfully over the medley of red-tiled roofs, up the great avenue beyond, to where the imposing front of the Hall, with its long rows of uncurtained windows, filled the background with a serene and brooding dignity. He stood there perhaps for as long as five minutes, until he seemed to become part of the dreaming landscape, a statue petrified by the moonlight, the only living figure in that drama of repose, all the geniality and kindliness drained somehow from his expression, a sinister and watchful figure, alien and inimical.

Suddenly he seemed to stiffen. From the outside of a small wood adjoining the Hall flashed a light—little more than a pin-prick of fire, but vivid and distinct. Three times it flashed. Then it disappeared. Peter Johnson, as silently as he had come, stepped back and, vanishing through the postern gate, reËntered his own domains.