The prisoner’s native genius now worked swiftly with him, and his sole thought was of escape as dusk gathered on Dartmoor. He puzzled his head in vain to see the drift of these doings. It seemed that his gun had been found beside the spot where Adam Thorpe was shot. What human hands could have put it there? He knew of no enemy on earth. Measuring the chances of establishing an alibi, he saw that they were small. Search could prove the fact that he had killed pheasants on the previous night, and it was quite possible for him to have killed a man also. He might have shot Thorpe at Middlecott and have spoken to the other keepers at Westcombe afterwards. Indeed, the hours agreed. Then he remembered the shadow that had leapt up out of the heath when he left Hangman’s Hut for the last time. That man it was who had destroyed him; and that man would never be found unless Daniel himself made the discovery. Revolving the matter in his young brains, the poacher believed that his only chance was present escape.
Once free and beyond the immediate and awful danger of the moment, Daniel Sweetland trusted that he might establish his innocence and prove the truth. But as a prisoner on trial, with his present scanty knowledge, there appeared no shadow of hope. He looked up at the man who drove and instinctively strained the steel that handcuffed his wrists. Escape seemed a possibility as remote as any miracle.
“What be your name, policeman?” asked Daniel, meekly. “You took me very quiet an’ gentle, an’ I thank you for it.”
“I’m called Corder—Alfred Corder. I’m the biggest man in the force.”
“An’ so strong as you’m big, by the looks of it.”
“Well, I’ve yet to meet my master,” said the officer. He had one little vanity, and that was his biceps.
“Be you any relation to Alf Corder, the champion of Devon wrestling, then?”
“I am the man,” said Mr Corder. “Never been throwed since I was twenty-two; an’ now I’m thirty-four.”
Daniel nodded.