Free Crossword Mystery by E.R. Punshon Page B

holiday-makers and trippers swarming all over the very place we had come to for quiet and peace. My sister-in-law liked it still less; hated it, in fact. We all felt if the scheme went through we should have to leave, and we weren’t so sure as Shorton was that there was big money in it. Anyhow, the money wouldn’t begin to come in for years, and we were neither of us so young we could afford to wait years for results. So we came down flat against it. Shorton argued we couldn’t possibly lose. He said the public would subscribe the money if we got out an attractive prospectus. If the thing was a failure, the public would stand the racket, and if it was the success Shorton expected – well, naturally there would be lots of cream for us, as the promoters, to skim off before we passed on the rest of the profits. Of course, we knew all that already.”
    â€œOf course,” murmured Bobby, though a little startled by this side-light on the workings of the Limited Liability Act.
    â€œThe more we thought of it,” Winterton went on, “the less we liked it. We had found Suffby; we were nicely settled and quite comfortable; it suited us very well; we felt a big hotel planted down like that, next door almost, would spoil the place for us altogether. I shouldn’t have had much peace for getting on with my book. Shorton’s an obstinate little devil, and he really had got it into his head that the scheme promised big money. He had got others interested, too. When we told him we didn’t like it, he got huffy, and said it would go on all the same. He had it all worked out. He had arranged for a motor-’bus service; he had an idea for collecting guests, free, gratis, and for nothing, from their homes, and bringing them direct to the hotel in a big Rolls-Royce with a chauffeur in livery. As he said, people do love to think they are getting something for nothing, and you can always make them pay through their noses afterwards. Archy saw it was serious. We arranged that I was to let Shorton talk. I wasn’t to commit myself, but I was to let him talk, and he could think what he liked from my being ready to listen and promising to consider his figures. Meanwhile Archy made inquiries. He found Shorton had already bought up a lot of land, and had options on more. He had bought nearly all Suffby Point, except, of course, the house Archy occupied and its garden. He didn’t want them. The site of the hotel was to be almost next door, and I suppose he reckoned that when Archy had had enough he would be willing to sell, and the house would come in nicely as an annex. But by this time rumours were getting about, and one man who had two fields reaching right across the Point was holding out for a big price. Shorton thought he was being had, and that put his back up. He had an option on the fields, but by way of a bluff he let it run out. He calculated that would make the owner of the fields come down. But Archy was watching. The option ran out at twelve one day, and at one o’clock Archy bought those two fields. When Shorton found out, he was furious. He called Archy a blackmailer. Archy said all right, now he wouldn’t sell those two fields for the amount of the American debt. He couldn’t close the fields altogether, for there was a right of way along the cliffs, but he said he would put up a corrugated iron fence twelve feet high all round them, with an iron turnstile for admission to the right of way path, and he would prosecute anyone for trespass who left the path by as much as a yard, and what would become of Shorton’s precious golf-course then, and who would go to an hotel you could only get at through an iron turnstile? So then there was another row, but Archy was within his rights, and a good many people sympathised with him. There was quite a general feeling that Archy was putting up a public-spirited fight to protect the amenities of the peaceful countryside against London