in possession of the really valuable information supplied both by Mrs. Grutch and the shabby little inquiry agent, Dick lost no time in making use of it. There was true wisdom in his thus speeding up matters, since Edith Danby’s appearance before the Tarhaven magistrate could not easily be postponed, and it was urgently necessary to find some evidence in her favour, however scanty. This, the young lawyer hoped, would be discoverable in Wessbury, and, within twenty-four hours of his acquiring the knowledge, he was dining in the private parlour of the village inn. As the landlord was a communicative individual, the landlady an excellent cook, and the room warmly home-like with a brisk fire, Hustings felt very well satisfied with the beginnings of this wild goose chase. For so, he inwardly termed it, so blurred was the trail. “I expect I am not the first person who has asked you about The Whispering Lane?” said Dick, when he arrived at the coffee and tobacco stage of after-dinner delights.
“Not by a long chalk, sir,” grinned the landlord, a cheerful young ex-soldier, intelligently frank, “but you ain’t like most of them spirit-merchants, sir: a weedy lot they are. Off their rockers, I reckon with their gone-west tosh. Beg pardon, sir, I hope I haven’t”
Dick shook his head, guessing why the man was confused, “I am a common-sense lawyer, Webb—I think you told me your name is Webb.”
“Yes, sir. And I take it, sir, that you’re an officer?”
“An ex-officer, R.G.A. Like yourself, one of the ‘also rans,’ Webb. But this Whispering Lane: is that story I repeated to you, as told to me, a true one?”
“Quite true, sir. Mrs. Brine did live in that bungalow; she did kill herself when her husband was killed; and she does haunt the lane.”
“Oh, come now, Webb, what about your talk of gone-west tosh?”
The landlord scratched his head, thoughtfully. “Well I do think that there’s a lot of nothing in that: all the same, sir, there’s something in it, which ain’t to be explained easily,” he looked serious and sank his voice to a whisper, “for I’ve heard the voices myself.”
“And they said?”
“Something like—‘Oh where are you, Edgar! Edgar!’ and such-like. Plain enough.”
“It must be a trick.”
“Maybe, sir; but it’s a trick no one has found out. Them spirit-merchants by the dozen have been hanging round for weeks, poking and prying and holding their blinking séances, but they’ve not got hold of the right end of the stick—if there is any right end,” added the man as an afterthought.
Hustings looked thoughtfully into the fire for a few minutes then brought out of his pocket the patched-up photograph of Slanton—torn by Edith—which he had induced Trant to send him. “Is that the picture of an inquirer?”
Webb took the photograph, scrutinized it carefully, and returned it with a dubious look, “I can’t say as I remember anyone like that, sir. But my wife might have seen him.”
“Ask Mrs. Webb to step this way, please!”
The landlady appeared in a few minutes, inspected the photograph, and also declared her ignorance. “Never set eyes on him before,” she said, sharply, “but, of course, everyone drawn to Wessbury by this ghost-business doesn’t come to us. Lots go straight to the lane and straight back to London when they’ve heard what they came to hear. And some stay with friends, going night after night to listen. No, sir,” she passed back the photograph to its owner, “I don’t know him.”
Baffled in this direction, Dick tried another. “This Mrs. Jerr. Who is she?”
“Oh, quite a nice old lady, sir, who rented the Brine bungalow from Mr. Chane some six months ago,” it was Webb who explained, anticipating his wife. “I’ve taken eggs and milk to her lots of times, when Wu Ti didn’t come for them.”
“A Chinaman!” Hustings feigned ignorance. “How does an old lady in an English village come to have a servant of that nationality?”
This time it was Mrs. Webb who gave the information. “Mrs. Jerr is the widow of a Hong Kong silk-merchant, who has lived all her life in the East. She brought Wu Ti with her when she returned to England after the death of her husband. He’s devoted to her is Wu Ti. Although,” added Mrs. Webb with a shiver, “I don’t like him myself: a creepy-crawly kind of man.”
“It’s the English way of looking at foreigners that speaks, sir,” said Webb, with a broad smile. “Wu Ti’s just the same as any other Chink. Eve seen lots of ’em in the Mile End Road, when I lived there, afore the war. But Minnie,” he grinned at his wife, “she’s lived in this here village all her life and don’t know things.”