Appleby Talks Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

his head as he found himself confronted with this tiresome little, yet perpetually fascinating, key-word of his profession. Why? There must be a reason. Probably it was a harmless reason. Perhaps it was a quite stupid and uninteresting reason, and any beguilement an explanation seemed to promise was no more than an effect of the romantic associations of this lonely and mouldering house. Still, explanation must be possible. There was a reason, if it could be found.
    He had strolled down to the river again. It must, after all, be termed something more than a stream – for although narrow, it was quite deep and decidedly navigable. One could bring up a motor-boat – say one of those substantially powered house-boat affairs that were now so popular on the Thames itself… It struck him that he had seen no boathouse. Yet this was something which Water Poole must surely possess. The absence of anything of the sort intrigued him. He began to poke about.
    There was certainly no boathouse on the bank – but the reason, when after some minutes’ search he found it, was interesting. An arm of the river – it was in fact a cut, but of evident antiquity and perhaps indeed as old as the mansion itself – passed clean under one wing of the house. Each end was secured by an iron grille which extended perhaps a couple of feet below the level of the water. That by which the cut emerged had quite clearly been undisturbed for generations. But at the entrance the state of affairs was different. The grille was rusty and bore every appearance of disuse – yet as Appleby peered at it he had his doubts. It was secured by an enormous padlock, plainly manufactured in early Victorian times – and on this too the rust was thick. Appleby however found it of considerable interest, and performed some complicated gymnastic manoeuvres in order to get a hand on it. When he rose and walked away he was softly whistling a melancholy little stave of his own composition. Judith would have marked the sign. His spirits were rising.
    And then he found the motor cars. They had not exactly been concealed; they were simply parked on the farther side of an out-building which only one rather pertinaciously interested in Water Poole would have been likely to visit. Both were large cars, but one was a good deal more resplendent than the other. Perhaps it would presently be necessary to examine them with some care, but for the moment Appleby contented himself with feeling the radiators. That of the resplendent car was quite cold. The other was warm.
    He turned and walked back thoughtfully in the direction of the house. He had almost reached it when he heard the sound of an engine behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder. An open car with a single occupant was approaching. He had just time to distinguish the figure as that of a young man when the car turned off the track and vanished round the outbuildings which Appleby had just left. He heard the engine stop. The suddenly restored silence brought him a curious sense of impending drama. The situation upon which he and Judith had stumbled had so far presented rather a meagre cast. It was possible, he thought, that the principal characters were now beginning to drop in.
    Perhaps he should go back and welcome this particular accession. He hesitated, and then his eye fell upon one part of Water Poole which he had not yet explored. It was the totally ruined part, where something like a whole wing had come down. If, as seemed very probable, one of the new arrivals was the owner or some other accredited person, he himself had perhaps only a few minutes left for further investigation before receiving a stiff request to make himself scarce. This persuaded him to press forward, even at the expense of an uncomfortably dusty scramble. In a moment he was climbing over the mountain of rubble with which this part of the forecourt was filled.
    As he progressed, he saw that even more of the house than he supposed had been gashed