Chapter XXV
The train was moving out after the briefest stop at a place so unimportant, and he swung himself into one of the carriages gliding past him. At first he thought the compartment was empty, but as the train emerged from a tunnel immediately beyond the station gates he observed a man with glasses reading a newspaper in the opposite corner seat. That reminded him to buy an evening paper at the next stopping place, a town of some importance, where a number of intending passengers were waiting on the platform. Several pushed past him into the compartment. He did not heed them. He sat in a deep reverie, his paper unfolded in his hand, past scenes flowing through his brain as the train sped on towards London. The carriage and its occupants receded from his vision, and he was back again on the Cornwall cliffs with Sisily. Her face appeared before his eyes just as he had seen it in their last parting.
He came back with an effort to the world of events, and unfolded his newspaper. That was a daily ordeal from which he shrank, yet dared not evade. During the past week he had faced it in all sorts of places: street corners, public squares, obscure restaurants, the burrowed windings of Underground stations, and once in the dark interior of a cinema where he had followed a girl with a vague resemblance to Sisily. As the days went on and he read nothing to alarm him, his tension grew less. It really looked as if Scotland Yard and the newspapers had forgotten all about the Cornwall murder, or had relegated it to the list of undiscoverable mysteries.
He now glanced at the headlines listlessly enough. The editor could offer nothing better on his front page that night than Ireland and the industrial situation. Charles opened the sheet and looked inside. His listlessness vanished as his eye fell upon his own name. In the guise of fat black capitals it headed a half-column article about his uncle’s death. Charles read it through, slowly and deliberately, to the end. He learnt that there had been what the writer called fresh developments in the case. The police were now looking for another suspect—himself. The detective engaged upon the case had suspicions of the murdered man’s nephew for some time past, but had his reasons for reticence—reasons which had now so completely disappeared that Scotland Yard had made public a full description of the young man and the additional information that he was supposed to be in London. Charles found himself reading the description of himself with the detached, slightly wondering air with which a man might be supposed to read his own death notice. He weighed the personal details quite critically. Young and tall. Yes. Good-looking. Was he? Dark blue eyes. Were they? He had never thought about them. Of gentlemanly appearance. That read like the advertisement of a Cheapside tailor—what was a gentlemanly appearance, if he had it? He had always associated it with a cheap lounge suit and a bowler hat. Very well dressed—then followed the description of his clothes. But he couldn’t be well dressed and of gentlemanly appearance at the same time!
These preoccupations floated lightly, almost playfully, on the surface of his mind, but the great fact had sunk to the depths like lead. His father’s fears had been right, and his departure from Cornwall had drawn attention to his actions on that night. He was—what was the phrase?—wanted by the police. So was Sisily. He was searching for Sisily, and the police were searching for both of them.
What had the police discovered about him? His lips framed the reply. Everything. That was to say, all there was to find out. Obviously they had discovered his visit to Flint House on that night, or at least, that he was out in the storm during the time the murder was committed. His commonsense told him the reason for Barrant’s reticence. He had kept quiet in the hope that he would go to his father’s house at Richmond, which no doubt had been closely watched. Now that Barrant had come to the conclusion that the man he was after was too clever to walk into that trap, he had confided his suspicions to the newspapers in order to guard all avenues of escape by putting the public on the watch for him.
A feeling of helplessness crept over Charles as he contemplated the incredible ingenuity of the mesh of events in which he and Sisily were entangled. Any moment might terminate his liberty and see him placed under lock and key. Would it help Sisily if he gave himself up and told all he knew? That was a question he had asked himself before, and dismissed it because he realized that his own story might involve her more deeply still. And the loss of time since then, coupled with his own disappearance, intensified the risk which such a course would entail. There was no hope for her in that direction. Where, then, were they to look for hope?
He was recalled to his surroundings by a hand laid on his arm. He started and looked round. The man next to him, with a glance at the paper in his hand, asked him if he could tell him the winner of the second race at Lingfield. “It ought to be in the stop-press,” he murmured. Charles turned the sheet to the indicated column, and the inquirer glanced at it with a satisfied smile, and the remark that it was only what he had expected, in spite of the weight. “A good horse,” he remarked approvingly. “But perhaps you don’t go in for racing yourself?”
Charles resisted an insane impulse to shout with laughter. Didn’t go in for racing! He was going in for racing with a vengeance—a race against time and the police. What was he to do now?