* * * * *
Up yonder in the wood, Colin Hayward, fagged with the long railway journey and much thinking, had thrown himself down to await the morning. He was almost asleep when the sound of knocking made him raise his head from his arms. As he did so he became conscious of a strong smell of burning timber. The sound, coupled with the odour, struck him as odd at that hour. He got up and crossed the few yards which lay between him and the verge of the wood. From there he looked down on fire and smoke, and quickly realized that the burning thing was the abode of his old friend Sam, the postman. He descended the slope as swiftly as the darkness, the treacherous ground, and the slippery heather permitted.
At last the lock was shattered, the door torn inwards. The hatchet fell from Sam’s hand as, spent and coughing most grievously, he staggered forth to reel across the road, bare-footed, in a long grey night-shirt. At the grass he stumbled and fell helplessly, in the heaving torment of smoke-charged lungs.
He was beginning to revive, when behind him, rising from hands and knees, John Corrie clubbed him over the head—once—twice—and would have struck again but that there was no need. Sam lay on his face, one hand clutching grass, the other under him, clenched against his breast. With a sob of terror, Corrie threw his cudgel into the ditch and turned his victim over. And now the back of the house was well ablaze, and in the yellow light even small things became plain. The clenched hand, for instance, held a crushed piece of paper—the little, terrible thing, the recovery of which meant salvation to Corrie. He went down on his knees to prise open the grasping fingers, but they fell apart of their own accord. He took the letter. He gloated over it. The latter proceeding was folly; his moment of exultation was to cost him dear. Hearing dulled by excitement and the thick muffler did not warn him until too late. He scrambled to his feet only to be seized viciously from behind by the collar and shaken like a rat. Then a cruel grip on his wrist caused him to drop the precious letter, and a savage kick sent him five yards beyond it on his face.
“You beastly coward!” cried a voice he knew, and all panic-stricken he picked himself up and fled.
Colin had started to pursue, when a groan from the stricken one recalled him. He picked up the letter, deeming that it must be of importance, stuffed it into his pocket, and proceeded to do what he could for Sam. Perhaps, after all, his student days had not been wholly wasted. But Sam was sore hurt. His home was a fiery furnace, and he neither knew nor cared.
CHAPTER XII
On the following afternoon Kitty and her new friend were lounging in the latter’s sitting-room, one of the four apartments of a little, old-fashioned, top flat in Long Acre. The situation of Miss Risk’s home had its drawbacks, but it was a most convenient one for her business, and she had given the house itself a charm and comfort not to be despised.
“But I can’t go on being your guest indefinitely,” Kitty was saying from her seat at the open window.
Hilda, stretched on the couch, smiled and then yawned. She had had a hard morning’s work, and the heat was oppressive.