Dr. Fell shook his head.
"No. No, there is only one man concerned in this. I know who he is."
Leaning against the coping of the well, Rampole groped in his pocket after cigarettes. He lit one with a muddy hand on the match, and even the cigarette smelt of the depths down there. He said:
"Then we're near the end-?"
"We're near the end," said Dr. Fell. "It will come tomorrow, because of a certain telegram." He was silent, meditating, with his light directed away from the body. "It took me a long time to realize it," he added, abruptly.
"There is one man, and only one man, who could have committed these murders. He has killed three men already, and tonight he may have killed a fourth Tomorrow there is an afternoon train arriving from London. We will meet that train. And there will be an end to the murderer."
"Then — the murderer doesn't live here?"
Dr. Fell raised his head. "Don't think about it now, young fellow. Go down to Yew Cottage and get a bath and a change of clothes; you need it. I can watch."
An owl had begun to cry over the Hag's Nook. Rampole moved through the brush, back along the trampled trail where they had carried Budge. He glanced back only once. Dr. Fell had switched off his flashlamp. Against the blue and silver of the moonlight, Dr. Fell was standing motionless, a massive black silhouette with a leonine head, staring down into the well.
Budge was conscious only of dreams and pain. He knew that he was lying on a bed somewhere, with deep pillows under his head. Once he thought he saw a white-lace curtain blowing at a window; he thought that a lamp was reflected in the window-glass, and that somebody was sitting near him, watching.