"No," she said, "we have no American staying with us."
Foster thought Daly opened the visitors' book, which lay on the counter, but as he had not yet entered his name, there was nothing to be learned from it. Still Daly might come into the smoking-room, and he picked up the Scotsman and leaning back in his chair held up the newspaper to hide his face. After a few moments, Daly said, "I don't know anybody here; it looks as if my friends aren't in the town."
Then he went along the hall, and when the door shut Foster put down the newspaper and began to think. He imagined that Daly hardly expected to find Featherstone in Hawick, but it was curious that he was going to Langholm, which was on the best road to Lockerbie in Annandale. It was the police Foster had tried to put off the track at the clachan by striking west across the moors, and he did not think Daly had anything to do with them. He could see no light on the matter, but when he went back to the garage it was something of a relief to find the car had gone.
XIII
FOSTER RETURNS TO THE GARTH
After breakfast next morning Foster asked the hotel porter to take his knapsack to the station and get him a ticket to Carlisle. He must leave a clew for Daly, who might come back to Hawick when he failed to find him in Annandale but would be badly puzzled if he went to Carlisle, because it was an important railway center, where one would have a choice of several different routes. This would give Foster a few quiet days, after which he must think of a way of inducing Daly to resume the chase. The latter probably thought he was following Lawrence, and if he did not, no doubt concluded that Foster was working in concert with him, and to find one would help him to deal with the other.
It was a dark morning and the smoke of the woolen factories hung about the town. A few lights burned in the station, but the building was gloomy and Foster had some trouble in finding the porter among the waiting passengers. Soon after he did so, the train came in and the man hurried along the platform, looking into the carriages.
"Ye wanted a corridor, sir," he said as he opened a door.
Foster got in and stood at the window until the porter went away. People were running up and down looking for places, but he had no time to lose. Opening the door on the opposite side, he went along the corridor and stood for a moment on the step at the other end of the carriage. He could not see the porter, and when two or three passengers ran up got down from the step. Next moment the whistle blew, the engine snorted, and the train rolled out of the station.
As none of the porters spoke to him, Foster thought he had managed the thing neatly and made it look as if he had come to see somebody off instead of having been left behind. For all that, he waited a minute or two, studying a time-table, to avoid the risk of overtaking the hotel porter; and then made his way by back streets out of the town. For some miles, the road he took ran south up a well-cultivated valley, past turnip and stubble fields and smooth pasture; and then changed to a rough stony track that climbed a hill.