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Disappointed, Bobby made up his mind to abandon the hunt and return home, for by now it was growing dark, and then a young woman made her appearance from the cottage, curious probably to know what the good-looking young stranger wanted.

‘Gentleman's looking for a windmill,' explained the patriarch, chuckling at an idea that seemed to him as extraordinary as humorous, for never before in all his long life had he known anyone come looking for a windmill – a public-house, now, that would be different, but a windmill! ‘There's no windmill here and never has been,' he repeated, ‘and I've known these parts man and boy for seventy year.'

‘I've heard tell the house down the lane used to be a windmill at one time, and I'm sure it looks it,' the young woman remarked.

‘But it's a house now and always has been long as I've known it,' retorted the patriarch triumphantly, ‘and that's seventy year–'

Bobby interrupted with a word of thanks to the young woman, who then added the information that the house was uninhabited and had been so for some time, and could only be seen by an order to view. At one time a neighbour had had the key, but now that was in the hands of the lawyers.

‘That's what I told the lady, as she couldn't get in no ways,' observed the patriarch, ‘but she went on just the same.'

‘The lady? What lady?' asked Bobby sharply.

‘The lady what asked the way,' explained the patriarch, ‘but it wasn't no windmill she was looking for – “Prospect House, that's to let”, she named it, same as it always has been in my time, and I've known these parts man and boy–'

‘Exactly,' interrupted Bobby. ‘What was the lady like?'

‘Well, she was very nice spoken,' replied the old gentleman after due consideration, ‘and she might be youngish, or it might be not so youngish as she looked, but looked a lady as was a lady and hadn't ever done a stroke of work in her life.'

The young woman added the information that the stranger had worn a blue leather motoring coat, with a blue hat trimmed with red and adorned with a crystal ornament in the shape of a dog. The lady's face, unfortunately, she had not seen, but she described her as taller than most, and Bobby remembered clearly the tall, slim form of Jennie Carsley as he had last seen her in a blue leather motoring coat and a blue hat to match, trimmed with red and showing a crystal ornament in the shape of a dog.

Uneasily he told himself it must be a mere coincidence. No doubt plenty of youngish women possessed blue leather motoring coats and wore hats to match. Certainly crystal dogs are common enough as hat ornaments. He told himself again, yet with a vague, growing unease, that it was a pure coincidence, for surely it was impossible Jennie Carsley could have come to-day to this lonely, deserted spot. The patriarch coughed, expectorated, and observed:

‘She ain't come back yet.'

‘Are you sure?' Bobby asked, and noticed that his voice had suddenly taken on a higher note than usual.

‘She might have gone by without your seeing her, granddad,' the young woman remarked.

‘I've been here ever since, ain't I?' retorted the old man impatiently. ‘How could she have gone by without me seeing her? Except she's gone away by the fields at the back, and she wouldn't do that, a lady like her, and if she hasn't then she's there still, ain't she?'

The young woman said in an aside to Bobby:

‘He drops off to sleep sometimes and then anyone might go by and he wouldn't know.'

Her grandfather saw her whispering.

‘I tell you the lady ain't come back,' he repeated irritably, ‘so she's there still, and making a long stay of it, too, she is that.'

‘It's only three minutes' walk down the lane,' the young woman said to Bobby, and he thanked her and walked on.

A tall clump of trees had hitherto hidden the house from him, but when he was past them and the turning just beyond, it came clearly into view, crowning a low eminence, showing dark and heavy against the dark and heavy northern sky.

It may have been nothing more than the gathering shades of evening that seemed to give it to Bobby's troubled imagination so frowning and sinister an appearance as it crouched there on its low eminence, as if preparing to hurl itself upon its prey in the meadows below. A tangle of trees and bushes in a neglected garden compassed it about, hiding its lower portion, but above one could see plainly where once, when its life had been busy and useful, its swift, revolving arms had hung.

For a moment or two Bobby stood still watching it and noting its lonely and deserted aspect, its shuttered windows and the broken steps to the front door, as though no living creature had been near it for long years. Yet a woman had asked the way to it only a short time before, and if she had come here and had not returned, what could be keeping her so long? It did not look a place where one would linger by choice.

The gate admitting to the garden hung broken on its hinges, and the gravel path leading up to the door was overgrown with moss and weed. There was no sign Bobby could distinguish to tell that anyone had really entered recently, and he wished he had the skill he had read that some possess, whereby a bent blade of grass, an overturned stone, can be made to tell who has passed that way.

If the old man he had been talking to could be trusted, a woman, wearing such clothes as Jennie Carsley often wore, had arrived here not long ago, and, again if the old man were correct, had not yet departed.

Yet the tumble-down old place, with its shuttered windows and neglected, overgrown garden, had so lonely and desolate an air it was hard to believe any visitor had recently troubled its brooding solitude.

For a moment or two Bobby stood hesitating, half reluctant to go on. Then he advanced slowly up the path, watching the transformed mill closely for any sign of life or movement. A low whistle close behind him made him start violently, so much did it take him by surprise, and when he turned he saw someone, half hidden by a tree, beckoning to him. He went across and recognized a man named Paul, one of the C.I.D. men.

‘Paul?' he exclaimed, ‘what on earth... what are you doing here?' he asked uneasily.

‘Have they sent you along?' Paul asked. ‘How did they get hold of you so quick?'

‘I'm only mooching around,' Bobby answered. ‘Is anything up?'

‘I don't know,' Paul answered, ‘but it looks queer to me – more than queer. I thought I had better let 'em know I had trailed my bird here – as rummy a place as I ever saw. I tell you, Owen, I don't half like it. When I reported, they said they'd be along as soon as they could manage it. I thought when I saw you – it would have been quick work, though. What do you mean – mooching around?'

‘I'm not on duty,' Bobby explained.

‘Well, then, how did you... I mean... what's brought you along?'

‘I just came along. I had heard of this place and I came along to have a look,' Bobby answered. ‘Do you mean you've trailed Mrs Carsley here?'

‘Mrs Carsley?' Paul repeated. ‘What's she got to do with it? It's Carsley himself that's here, not his wife – she's not in the game, is she?'

‘I don't know... she may be,' Bobby answered. ‘Do you mean... do you say Mr Carsley – Peter Carsley's here?'

‘Yes, and a rummy place to come to, if you ask me. Up to something he is, or I'll miss a month's pay. What do you mean – Mrs Carsley? What makes you look like that?'

‘Some people down the road,' Bobby answered, ‘told me they had seen a lady, answering Mrs Carsley's description, go past just now towards this place – and they said that she hadn't come back again.'

Paul was a little pale himself, now.

‘Having tea, are they?' he said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Or fixing up something together – I'm glad I rang up, anyhow. A rummy place,' he said, ‘for a husband to ask his wife to meet him.'

‘Yes,' agreed Bobby.

‘I suppose she's got lots of money,' Paul said. ‘Piles of money she's got, I suppose.'

‘Yes,' said Bobby again.

‘Come round this way,' Paul said. ‘I'll show you something.'

He led the way round to the back of the building, where a small opening near the ground gave a measure of air and light to an inner cellar.

‘Have a look,' Paul said.

Bobby lay upon the ground, the only way to see within.

Inside was Peter Carsley. On the cellar floor was a pile of freshly turned earth. In front of Peter was a large hole. Peter had a spade in his hands, and had evidently been digging, but for the moment was resting.

Paul said softly in Bobby's ear:

‘I couldn't make it out at first, but now it looks to me as though it is a grave he is digging down there.'

It was perhaps the cold dampness of the earth, striking up as Bobby lay stretched full length, that set him shivering and shaking, like a man stricken with a fever. He scrambled to his feet. He knew now in literal truth what that old phrase means which speaks of the tongue cleaving to the roof of the mouth. For so now did his, and he could not speak. Paul said to him:

‘Pull yourself together.'

‘Yes. Yes,' Bobby muttered, getting the words out with difficulty. ‘We must... I mean we must ask him... ask him what he's doing... and stop him...'

But Paul shook his head.

‘No good,' he said, ‘no good our doing anything... too late to stop him.'

‘We don't know,' Bobby muttered and paused and Paul said:

‘If he hadn't done what he meant to do, he wouldn't be digging there.'

Bobby did not answer. He could not, for again the power of speech had left him. Paul said:

‘He can't get away ... there's only the one door, the other door's boarded up. We had better wait, Mitchell'll be along soon, they said he would come himself.'

They had returned again to the front of the building and in fact almost at once heard the sound of an approaching car. It glided up to the garden entrance and stopped, and Mitchell and Gibbons and another man got out. They came up the garden path together; Mitchell, voluble as ever, holding forth to the other two. Paul and Owen showed themselves. Mitchell broke off his discourse to survey them with his most benevolent expression. Then he said to Gibbons:

‘There's Owen all right enough and that's half a crown you owe me.'

Gibbons produced it reluctantly.

‘And five bob more to come from the Assistant Commissioner,' Mitchell observed, pocketing the coin with satisfaction, ‘picking up money I call it.'

‘Twenty-four hours' leave you had,' Gibbons said reproachfully to the somewhat bewildered Owen.

‘When you've had as much to do with Constable Robert Owen as the good Lord for my sins has inflicted on me,' said Mitchell, ‘you'll find it takes more than twenty-four hours' leave to keep him quiet – cheap at half a crown to know that, too, if you ask me. Now then, Paul, was it you brought Owen here, or did Owen bring you?'

‘I trailed Mr Carsley here, sir,' Paul answered, ‘and according to instruction to report unusual happenings, and this place seeming so, I rang up.'

‘Quite right,' said Mitchell. ‘But where does Owen come in?'

‘He said he was just mooching around, sir,' explained Paul.

‘He would be,' agreed Mitchell, ‘worth seven and six to me, too, that I bet we should find him on the spot or thereabouts – at least, if the Assistant Commissioner pays up. Inspectors have got to pay supers, but you can't be so sure of Assistant Commissioners – abuse of authority, I call it. Anything happened to make the two of you look the way you do and Owen do a sort of step dance because he wants to get a word in and discipline won't let him?'

Owen, who had been fidgeting uneasily at one side, subsided into stillness, reminding himself that Mitchell's flow of talk generally hid some purpose and that most likely he had been gaining a moment or two to take stock of the situation. Paul answered:

‘We don't know, sir, we don't know if anything's happened at all. I thought we had better wait till you came before beginning investigations. Mr Carsley is in there – at least, I saw him go in and I haven't seen him come out again. Owen thinks there's reason to believe Mrs Carsley is there, too, but I don't know about that myself and I haven't seen her.'

‘Mrs Carsley?' Mitchell repeated. He turned sharply on Owen. ‘How do you know that?' he asked. ‘Been trailing her?'

‘No, sir,' Owen answered. ‘I had no idea she was here, but an old man at a cottage down the road, when I asked the way, told me a tall young lady, answering Mrs Carsley's description, came up here a little while ago and he hadn't seen her go away again.'

‘Ah, yes, yes,' Mitchell said slowly, evidently thinking deeply; ‘and then Carsley arrived?'

‘Now he's digging in the cellar, sir,' Paul said.

‘Digging? Digging what? What for?'

‘I couldn't say,' Paul answered. ‘But it looked to me as though it might be a grave.'

There was a silence then, a silence in which could have been heard the slow breaths they took. Instinctively their eyes turned towards that shuttered, solitary building. It was as though they questioned it and it made no reply, guarding its secret well.

‘Well, now, you know, that's funny,' Gibbons said at last, ‘funny I call that, digging...'

‘Very funny,' agreed Mitchell in a grim enough tone. He was still intently watching the old windmill as though his glance could penetrate its ancient walls. ‘Have they been there long?' he asked.

‘It's about an hour since Mr Carsley got here,' Paul answered. ‘Mrs Carsley was apparently here already.'

‘You've not heard anything?'

‘No, sir. But I was away a few minutes when I went to ring up and report.'