“Gregory,” said Gilead, as, leaving the petrified householder, he walked away with the constable, “this is all Greek to you, of course. Isn’t there some saying about a nod sufficing for a wise man and a rod for a fool?”
“I daresay there is, Mr Balm.”
“I wonder which I am? Windsor is a terminus on the South Western, isn’t it, and she took the Windsor train, third class single? Her ticket cost two shillings—twenty-four miles at a penny a mile. That ought to tell us what station she was bound for.”
“It ought, sir. I think you’re very clever.”
“O, don’t anticipate! The rod may be in pickle for me yet. Well, it’s too late to put it to the proof. For to-night good-night, Gregory.”
Nevertheless he went to the station, too restless to postpone conclusions altogether. Applying his test to the time-table, he found that the twenty-four mile theory carried him to Datchet—not a mile before or beyond. There was a train that started at ten minutes after midnight. Should he dare everything and go by it?
A taxicab whirled him to his rooms, waited while his whirled together a few necessaries, whirled him back again. At 1.18 A.M. he was hammering, still highly strung, at the door of the solitary inn in Datchet.
Reason and reaction only came with the morning. His prescience and his calculations seemed all ridiculously out of gear. He quite blushed over his coffee and kidney, thinking of the shame of the castigation he had earned for his shoulders. No doubt the two shillings had represented only part of the price of the ticket, the remainder being supplied from Miss Fleming’s own pocket. Or perhaps she had taken but not used the whole of that sum, retaining a few pence for tips. Either way hopelessly threw out his reckoning.
He felt so discomfited all of a sudden, that he was almost on the point of taking the next train back to London. However, he forbore, deciding for his restoration on a balmy day in the country; and, evading, even in thought, all tentative enquiries as to recent arrivals in the village, he set out after breakfast for a walk.
It was a sweet and glowing morning of late September, frank, fresh and life-stirring—the last to associate itself with thoughts of death and apparitions. The whole country seemed enjoying a restful convalescence from the low fever of August; the blatant tripper had fled; blazers of garish hue flowered no longer among the rushed; the sweeping cry of the swallows cut the wide air in place of chaff and banjo. Walking round by the Victoria Bridge, Gilead stopped to lean over the parapet and drink in the quiet beauty of the scene.