Three days had passed.
If George had the Daily to curse for the miserable life of secrecy and constant agony of discovery that he was compelled to lead, he had it also to bless that his discovery by the red-headed Pinner boy had not long ago led to his being run to earth. In its anxiety to cap the satisfactory splash it was making over this Country House Outrage, the Daily had overstepped itself and militated against itself. Those “Catchy Clues” were responsible. So cunningly did they inspire the taste for amateur detective work, so easy did they make such work appear, that Mr. Pinner, having thrashed silence into his red-headed son, kept that son's discovery to himself. As he argued it—laboriously pencilling down “data” in accordance with the “Catchy Clue” directions,—as he argued it—if he communicated his knowledge to the Daily or to the local police, if he put them—(the word does not print nicely) on the scent, ten to one they would capture the thief and secure the reward. No, Mr. Pinner intended to have the reward himself. Therefore he hoarded his secret; brooded upon it; dashed off hither and thither as the day's news brought him a Catchy Clue that seemed to fit his data.
But of this George knew nothing. Steeped in crime this miserable young man dragged out his awful life at Temple Colney: nightmares by night, horrors by day.
Every morning with trembling fingers he opened his Daily; every morning was shot dead by these lines or their equivalent:
COUNTRY HOUSE OUTRAGE.
FRESH CLUE.
CAT SEEN.
SENSATIONAL STORY.
After much groaning and agony George would force himself to know the worst; after swearing furiously through the paragraphs of stuffing with which Mr. Bitt's cunning young man skilfully evaded the point, would come at last upon the “fresh clue” and read with a groan of relief that, so far as the truth were concerned, it was no clue at all.
But the strain was horrible. All Temple Colney read the Daily; eagerly debated its “Catchy Clues.”
Yet George could not see, he told himself, that he would better his plight by seeking fresh retreat. If the Daily were to be believed, all the United Kingdom read it and discussed its Catchy Clues. He decided it were wiser to remain racked at Temple Colney rather than try his luck, and perhaps be torn to death, elsewhere.
Twice he had been moved to abandon his awful enterprise—in the train fleeing from the red-headed Pinner boy; pounding across country pursued by curious inhabitants of Temple Colney. On these occasions this miserable George had been minded to cry defeated to the circumstances that struck at him, to return to Herons' Holt with the cat whilst yet he might do so without gyves on his wrists.
But thought of his dear Mary hunted thought of this craven ending. “I'll hang on!” he had cried, thumping the carriage seat: “I'll hang on! I'll hang on! I'll hang on!” he had thumped into the table upon his weary return to the inn on the day he had been followed.