The Safety Pin | Page 8

main man amongst my special constables, and he can talk to the rest. Just give me your close attention for five minutes, Mr. Hackdale."
John Hackdale listened quietly while Mellapont told him the story which had been elaborated in the landlord's parlour at the Chancellor. Shelmore watched him while he listened, and thought to himself that John Hackdale was fitted for something better than a draper's counter, however long and big and wide that counter might be. Unlike his brother Simmons, who was meagre and sharp-featured, and had a good deal of the fox or ferret look about him, John was a tall, well-built man, handsome of face, and with an air of quiet reserve in eyes arid lips that would have stood him in good stead, thought Shelmore, if he had gone in for professional work--his own, for instance. He had the barrister look--Shelmore mentally pictured him in a wig and gown. And that he had something of legal acumen was proved by his first remark.
"What do you think of that, now?" asked Mellapont, making an end of the story. "How's it strike you?"
Hackdale looked slowly from one man to the other.
"It strikes me like this," he answered. "Whatever the young lady may think, her guardian has been in Southernstowe before."
"Aye?--and what makes you think that now?" demanded Mellapont, eagerly. "What?"
"Obvious!" said Hackdale. "He knew all about the wicket door in the entrance to Sepulchre Alley. To my knowledge that wicket door's been there--well, ever since I was a youngster. When I first earned my living as a shop boy, I've carried many a parcel into the Chancellor by that door."
"Good!" said Mellapont. "So you think--"
"I think Mr. Deane knew Southernstowe, and somebody in Southernstowe," replied Hackdale, "and that he took it into his head, suddenly, to go out and see that somebody, late as it was. That he never returned is a matter which--"
He paused, glancing meaningly at his companions.
"Well?" said Mellapont, sharply. "Well?"
"Which needs closely enquiring into," concluded Hackdale. He paused again, looking still more meaningly and narrowly at the superintendent. "I suppose, as he was travelling about, he would have money on him--and valuables?" he suggested.
"Lots!--according to all we've just heard," asserted Mellapont.
"It was quarterly fair-day, Monday," remarked Hackdale. "As you're aware, a good many of the riff-raff--drovers, hangers-on, and the like--stop about the town overnight, sleeping out, many of them. If Mr. Deane went out at midnight, say to some house on the outskirts--"
"Just what I've been thinking!" exclaimed Mellapont. "Well, the only thing is to search and enquire and make the thing public. There's one advantage of being in a place as small as this-any rumour'll be all over the spot in an hour. Make it known, Hackdale--you too, Mr. Shelmore. Hackdale, I suppose you're going on your beat--north side of the city, yours, isn't it? Drop the news wherever you go--somebody, surely, must have seen or heard something of this man."
"I don't know," said Hackdale, doubtfully. "Ninety-nine out of every hundred of Southernstowe people are in bed by ten o'clock. During this special constable business, I've scarcely met a soul in the streets after that hour."
He nodded to Shelmore and went out, pausing in the outer room to say a few words to a couple of fellow special constables who had just come in and were preparing for their voluntary duties. Then, leaving the police station, he went out into the street and turned down a narrow lane that ran along the side of the City Hall. At the end of that lane there was a small square, set round with old, half-timbered houses; in one of these, a boarding house, kept by two old maiden ladies, Hackdale lodged with his brother Simmons. He wanted to see Simmons now: Simmons was the likeliest means he knew of for noising anything abroad: Simmons, at a word, would spread the news of Deane's strange disappearance all over Southernstowe in half-an-hour.
Hackdale opened the door of the boarding house and walked into a square, oak-wainscotted hall, lighted from the centre by a swinging lamp. Beneath this lamp stood a man in immaculate evening dress, who was carefully brushing an opera hat. He was a tall, well-built man of sixty or thereabouts, who had been strikingly handsome in his time, but who now bore something of the appearance of a carefully-preserved and skilfully patched up ruin. This was Mark Ebbitt, whom Hackdale knew both as a fellow lodger and as manager of the newly established picture house; he also knew that in his time Ebbitt had been an actor, and that his career had not proved over successful; indeed, Hackdale remembered him, on his first coming to Southernstowe, as having been in the down-at-heel and frayed-linen stage. But now he had blossomed out again, and as manager of a