Brendon made no reply. Neither his conscience nor his wit threw any light on the point. Then Peter, turning to his notes, touched on a minor incident and showed the other that it admitted of a doubt.
"D'you remember the night you left 'Crow's Nest' after your first visit? On the way back to Dartmouth you suddenly saw Robert Redmayne standing by a gate; and when the moonlight revealed you to him, he leaped away and disappeared into the trees. Why?"
"He knew me."
"How?"
"We had met at Princetown and we had spoken together for some minutes by the pool in Foggintor Quarry, where I was fishing."
"That's right. But he didn't know who you were then. Even if he'd remembered meeting you six months before in the dusk at Foggintor, why should he think you were a man who was hunting him?"
Mark reflected.
"That's true," he said. "Probably he'd have bolted from anybody that night, not wishing to be seen."
"I only raise the question. Of course it is easily explained on a general assumption that Redmayne knew every man's hand was against him. He would naturally, in his hunted state, fly the near approach of a man."
"Probably he didn't remember me."