“Thanks, Inspector. Very decent of you,” answered Shelley. “We don’t always meet with such consideration from the local men we have to work with, I can assure you. And it’s a real pleasure to meet a man who understands exactly what’s wanted.”

Without obviously flattering, Shelley always thought it worth while to keep in with the local men with whom he had to work. It made for better feelings, and for greater efficiency. He had known of Scotland Yard men who had failed because in a foolish manner they had antagonised the local police; and so had not been put into touch with some vital clue.

So he smiled gratefully at Inspector Bowes as they made their way towards the waiting car, and waved his hand to the local man as he stood on the step of the police station and watched them move slowly off across the rough, cobbled street.

It was a nightmare drive, and Shelley found himself comparing it with a previous occasion when he had been engaged on a similar chase across the dreary waste of Dartmoor. Now here he was engaged on a chase across another moor, some hundreds of miles farther north, and with, he hoped, a similarly successful conclusion ahead.

He found himself comparing the two scenes. Dartmoor, with its sudden outcrops of grey granite, its main colour purple and grey. Here the land was more dismal and yet no less fascinating. Its mixtures of brown and fawn were delightful to the eye. And Shelley sometimes had the eye of an artist.

He recalled that it was not far from here that the Brontë sisters had eaten their hearts out in a country parsonage, and he admitted that the gloom of Wuthering Heights was understandable in such an atmosphere of cruel, bitter rocks and hills.

He thought, too, of the strangeness of fate, that had led him from the British Museum, centre of civilisation, to the bitter waste of a Yorkshire moor, still more or less as it had been when primitive man hunted his prey, the road a mere pale ribbon stretching over the endless hills.

But he was brought up with a jerk. The car had stopped.

“Blackdown House, sir,” explained Constable Cartwright, and Shelley smiled.

“Good,” he said. “Now for dear Mr. Wallace.” He opened the door of the car and alighted. Cunningham, Henry Fairhurst, and Constable Cartwright followed him. They stood in the road and looked up at the dreary bulk of grey stone that towered its three tall stories above them.

Chapter XX

Chapter XX

At Blackdown House

Blackdown House was quite an imposing place. It was built plainly, of a dull grey stone, and it was much taller than the other houses in the street. They were dwarfed in comparison, even though they were far from being the “workmen’s cottages” which were to be found in neighbouring streets.