ch forbade questioning, so Peters sheered off, well
content with the share permitted him in the inquiry thus far.

"That fellow, Hart, is no fool," went on Winter rapidly. "He said last
night 'How does one get evidence?' It was not easy to answer. Siddle has
gone to his mother's funeral. What do you think!"

"You'd turn me into a housebreaker, would you?" whined Furneaux bitterly.
"I must do the job, of course, just because I'm a little one. Well, well!
After a long and honorable career I have to become a sneak thief. It may
cost me my pension."

"There's no real difficulty. An orchard--"

"Bet you a new hat I went over the ground before you did."

"Get over it quickly now, and get something out of it, and I'll _give_
you a new hat. Got any tools?"

"I fetched 'em from town Tuesday morning," chortled Furneaux. "So now
who's the brainy one?"

He skipped into the hotel, while Winter went to the station to make sure
of Siddle's departure and destination. Yes, the chemist had taken a
return ticket to Epsom, where a strip of dank meadow-land on the road to
Esher marks the last resting-place of many of London's epileptics. On
returning to the high-street, Winter lighted a cigar, a somewhat common
occurrence in his everyday life, where-upon Furneaux walked swiftly up
the hill. A farmer, living near the center of the village, owned a rather
showy cob. Winter found the man, and persuaded him to trot the animal to
and fro in front of the hotel. There was a good deal of noise and
hoof-clattering, and people came to their doors to see what was going on.
Obviously, if they were watching the antics of a skittish two-year-old in
the high-street, their eyes were blind to proceedings in the back
premises. Even the postmaster and his daughter were interested onlookers,
and a policeman, who might have put a summary end to the display,
vanished as though by magic.

Luckily, Winter was a good judge of a horse. When the cob was stabled,
and the farmer came to the inn to have a drink, he was forced to admit a
tendency to cow hocks, which, it would seem, is held a fatal blemish in
the Argentine.

Meanwhile, Furneaux had dodged into a lane and thence to a bridle-path
which emerged near Bob Smith's forge. When he had traversed, roughly
speaking, one-half of a rectangle in which the Hare and Hounds occupied
the center of one of the longer sides, he climbed a gate and followed a
hedge. Though not losing a second, he took every precaution