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H

XXXI

E acted his part well, and everything worked out easily-more easily than one could have dared to

hope for.

Not a soul was thinking about him. He had to assert himself, thrust himself forward, before people in the village would so much as notice that he had come back among them again. The inquest, as he gathered, was going to be a matter of form: it seemed doubtful if the authorities would even make an examination of the ground over there. All was to be as nice as nice for him.

Yet he was afraid. Fear possed him-this sneaking, torturing, emasculating passion that he had never known hitherto was now always with him.

He lay alone in the camp-bedstead sweating and funking. The events of the day made him seem safe, but he felt that he would not be really safe for ages and ages. Throughout the night he was going over the list of his idiotic mistakes, upbraiding himself, cursing himself for a hundred acts of brainless folly. The plan had been sound enough: it was the accomplishment of the plan that had been so damnably rotten.

Why had he changed his addresses in that preposterous fashion? Instead of providing himself with useful materials for an alibi, he had just made a lot of inexplicable movements. Then the pawning of the watch-in a false name. How could he ever explain

that? Anybody short of money may put his ticker up the spout, but no one has the right to assume an alias. And the buying of the clothes and hat. Instead of bargaining, as innocent people do, however small the price demanded, he just dabbed down the money. He must have appeared to be in the devil's own hurry to get the things and cut off with them. The two men at that shop must have noticed his peculiarities as a customer. They would be able to pick him out in the biggest crowd that ever assembled in a magistrate's

court.

But far worse had been his watchings and prowlings round and about the house in Grosvenor Place. Could he have blundered upon anything more full of certain peril? Why, to stand still for ten minutes in London is to invite the attention of the police. Their very motto or watchword is "Move on;" and for every policeman in helmet and buttons there are three policemen in plain clothes to make sure that people are moving on. While watching that house he had been watched himself.

Then, again, the insane episode of the eating-housethe wild hastening of his program, the untimely change of appearance in that thronged room-and his rudeness to the woman behind the counter. With anguish he remembered, or fancied he remembered, that she had looked at him resentfully seeming to say as she studied his face. "I'm sizing you up. Yes, I won't forget you you brute."

His bag too-left by him at Waterloo for a solid proof that he was not in London as he pretended. The bag was at the cloak-room all right when he came to fetch it, but perhaps in the meantime it had been

to Scotland Yard and back again. Besides, Waterloo was a station he should never once have showed his nose in; the link between Waterloo and home was too close his own line-the railway whose staff was replenished by people from his own part of the country. While he was feeling glad that the passengers were strangers, perhaps a porter was saying to a mate: "There goes the postmaster of Rodchurch. He and I were boys together. I should know him anywhere, though it's ten years since I last saw William Dale." He ought to have used Paddington Station—he could have got to Salisbury that way, and gone into the woods the way he came out of them.

Last of all, that child in the glade-a child strayed from one of the cottages, or the child of some woodcutter who had brought her with him, who was perhaps a very little way off, who listened to the tale of what the child had seen five minutes after she had seen it. Of course nothing much would be thought of the child's tale at first; but it would assume importance directly suspicion had been aroused; it would link up with other circumstances, it would suggest new ideas and further researches to the minds of detectives, it might be the clue that eventually hanged him.

It seemed to Dale as he went over things in this quivering, quaking manner that, from the little girl weaving flowers back to the two Jews selling slops, he had recruited an army of witnesses to denounce and destroy him.

Only in one respect had he not bungled. He got rid of the clothes and hat all right. Cut and torn into narrow stripes they had gone comfortably down the drains of the temperance hotel in Stamford Street. That was

a night's wise labor. But the labor and thoughtful care had come too late, on top of all the previous folly.

And he said to himself, "It's prob'ly all up with me. This quiet is the usual trick of the p'lice to throw you off the scent. They're playin' wi' me. They let me sim to run free, because they know they can 'aarve me when they want me."

With such thoughts, he went down-stairs of a morning to talk jovially with Ridgett, to chaff Miss Yorke; and with the thoughts unchanged he came up-stairs to glower at Mavis across the breakfast-table.

His thoughts in regard to Mavis were extraordinarily complicated. At first he had been horribly afraid of her-dreading their meeting as a crisis, a turningpoint, an awful bit of touch-and-go work. It seemed that she of all people would be the one to suspect the truth. When she heard of the man's death, surely the idea must have flashed into her mind: "This is Will's doing." But then perhaps, when no facts appeared to support the idea, she might have abandoned it. Nevertheless it would readily come flashing back againand again, and again.

To his delight, however, he saw that she did not suspect now, and there was nothing to show that she ever had suspected. And he thought in the midst of his great relief: "How stupid she is really. Any other woman would have put two and two together. But she is a stupid woman. Stupidity is the key-note to her character-and it furnishes the explanation of half her wrong-doing."

This reflection was comforting, but he still considered her to be a source of terrible danger to him. For the moment at least, all his resentment about her past

unchasteness and her recent escapade was entirely obliterated; it was a closed chapter; he did not seem to care two pence about it—that is, he did not feel any torment of jealousy. The offense was expiated. But he must not on any account let her see this—no, because it might lead her, stupid as she was, to trace the reason. He knew himself that if Mr. Barradine had died otherwise than by his blows, he would have felt quite differently toward Mavis. He would have felt then "The swine has escaped me. We are not quits. That dirty turn is not paid for." He would have continued to smart under the affront to his pride as a man, and association with Mavis would have still been impossible.

Logically, then, he must act out these other feelings; Mavis must see him as he would have been under those conditions. But it made it all so difficult-two parts to render adequately instead of one. In the monstrous egotism produced by his fear, he thought it uncommonly rough luck that the wife who ought to have been dutifully assisting him should thus add to his cares and worries. Sometimes he had to struggle against insane longings to take her into his confidence, and compel her to do her fair share of the job -to say, slap out, "It's you, my lady, who've landed me in this tight place; so the least you can do is to help pull me into open country."

Moreover, as the days and nights passed, instincts that were more human and natural made him crave for re-union. He yearned to be friends with her again. He felt that if he could safely make it up, cuddle her as he used to do, hold her hands and arms when he went to sleep, he would derive fortitude and support against

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