§ 9
They got back to the hotel about half-past eleven and the Captain went and had an unpleasant time with one of the tyres of his motor bicycle which had got down in the night. In replacing the tyre he pinched the top of one of his fingers rather badly. Then he got the ordnance map of the district and sat at a green table in the open air in front of the hotel windows and speculated on the probable flight of Bealby. He had been last seen going south by east. That way lay the sea, and all boy fugitives go naturally for the sea.
He tried to throw himself into the fugitive’s mind and work out just exactly the course Bealby must take to the sea.
For a time he found this quite an absorbing occupation.
Bealby probably had no money or very little money. Therefore he would have to beg or steal. He wouldn’t go to the workhouse because he wouldn’t know about the workhouse, respectable poor people never know anything about the workhouse, and the chances were he would be both too honest and too timid to steal. He’d beg. He’d beg at front doors because of dogs and things, and he’d probably go along a high road. He’d be more likely to beg from houses than from passers-by, because a door is at first glance less formidable than a pedestrian and more accustomed to being addressed. And he’d try isolated cottages rather than the village street doors, an isolated wayside cottage is so much more confidential. He’d ask for food—not money. All that seemed pretty sound.
Now this road on the map—into it he was bound to fall and along it he would go begging. No other?... No.
In the fine weather he’d sleep out. And he’d go—ten, twelve, fourteen—thirteen, thirteen miles a day.
So now, he ought to be about here. And to-night,—here.
To-morrow at the same pace,—here.
But suppose he got a lift!...