A Silent Witness | Page 9

to a great number of persons and whose disappearance
must surely be observed at once and be the occasion of very stringent
enquiries. But no enquiries had apparently been made. I had seen no
notice in the papers of any missing cleric, and clearly the police had
heard nothing or they would have looked me up. The whole affair was
enveloped in tho profoundest mystery. Dead or alive, the man had
vanished utterly; and whether he was dead or alive, the mystery was
equally beyond solution.
These reflections brought me, almost unconsciously, to another of my
favourite walks; the pretty footpath from the Heath to Temple Fortune.
I had crossed the stile and stepped off the path to survey the pleasant
scene, when my eye was attracted by a number of streaks of alien
colour on the leaves of a burdock. Stooping down, I perceived that they
were smears of oil-paint, and inferred that someone had cleaned a
palette on the herbage; an inference that was confirmed a moment later
by what looked like the handle of a brush projecting from a clump of
nettles. When I drew it out, however, it proved to be not a brush, but a
very curious knife with a blade shaped like a diminutive and attenuated
trowel; evidently a painting-knife and also evidently home-made, at
least in part, for the tang had been thrust into a short, stout
brush-handle and secured with a whipping of waxed thread. I dropped
it into my outside breast pocket and went on my way, wondering if by
chance it might have been dropped by my fair acquaintance; and the
thought was still in my mind when its object hove in sight. Turning a
bend in the path, I came on her quite suddenly, perched on her little

camp-stool in the shadow of the hedge, with the open sketching-book
on her knees, working away with an industry and concentration that
seemed to rebuke my own idleness. Indeed, she was so much engrossed
with her occupation that she did not notice me until I stepped off the
path and approached with the knife in my hand. "I wonder," said I,
holding it out and raising my cap, "if this happens to be your property. I
picked it up just now among the nettles near the barn."
She took the knife from me and looked at it inquisitively. "No," she
replied, "it isn't mine, but I think I know whose it is. I suspect it
belongs to an artist who has been doing a good deal of work about the
Heath. You may have seen him."
"I have seen several artists working about here during the summer.
What was this one like?"
"Well," she answered with a smile, "he was like an artist. Very much
like. Quite the orthodox get up. Wide brimmed hat, rather long hair and
a ragged beard. And he wore sketching-spectacles-half-moon-shaped
things, you know-and kid gloves-which were not quite so orthodox."
"Very inconvenient, I should think."
"Not so very. I work in gloves myself in the cold weather or if the
midges are very troublesome. You soon get used to the feel of them;
and the man I am speaking of wouldn't find them in the way at all
because he works almost entirely with painting-knives. That is what
made me think that this knife was probably his. He had several, I know,
and very skilfully he used them, too."
"You have seen his work, then?"
"Well," she admitted, "I'm afraid I descended once or twice to play the
'snooper'. You see, his method of handling interested me."
"May I ask what a 'snooper' is?" I enquired.
"Don't you know? It's a student's slang name for the kind of person who

makes some transparent pretext for coming off the path and passing
behind you to get a look at your picture by false pretences."
For an instant there flashed into my mind the suspicion that she was
administering a quiet "backhander", and I rejoined hastily: "I hope you
are not including me in the genus 'snooper'."
She laughed softly. "It did sound rather like it. But I'll give you the
benefit of the doubt in consideration of your finding the knife-which
you had better keep in trust for the owner."
"Won't you keep it? You know the probable owner by sight and I don't;
and meanwhile you might experiment with it yourself."
"Very well," she replied, dropping it into her brush-tray, "I'll keep it for
the present at any rate."
There was a brief pause, and then I ventured to remark, "That looks a
very promising sketch of yours. And how well the subject comes."
"I'm glad you like it," she replied, quite simply, viewing her work with
her head on one side. "I want it to turn out