"Hill has bolted!"
Rolfe flung the words at Inspector Chippenfield in a tone which he was unable to divest entirely of satisfaction. "Fancy his being the guilty party after all," he added, with the tone of satisfaction still more evident in his voice. "I often thought that he was our man, and that he was playing with you—I mean with us."
Inspector Chippenfield had betrayed surprise at the news by dropping his pen on the official report he was preparing. But it was in his usual tone of cold official superiority that he replied:
"Do you mean that Hill, the principal witness in the Riversbrook murder trial, has disappeared from London?"
"Disappeared from London? He's bolted clean out of the country by this time, I tell you! Cleared out for good and left his unfortunate wife and child to starve."
"How have you learnt this, Rolfe?"
"His wife told me herself. I went to the shop this afternoon to have a few words with Hill and see how he felt after the way Holymead had gone for him at the trial. His wife burst out crying when she saw me, and she told me that her husband had cleared out last night after he came home from court. The hardened scoundrel took with him the few pounds of her savings which she kept in her bedroom, and had even emptied the contents of the till of the few shillings and coppers it contained. All he left were the half-pennies in the child's money-box. He cleared out in the middle of the night after his wife had gone to bed. He left her a note telling her she must get along without him. I have the note here—his wife gave it to me."
Rolfe took a dirty scrap of paper out of his pocket-book and laid it before Inspector Chippenfield. The paper was a half sheet torn from an exercise-book, and its contents were written in faint lead pencil. They read:
"Dear Mary:
"I have got to leave you. I have thought it out and this is the only thing to do. I am too frightened to stay after what took place in the court to-day. I'll make a fresh start in some place where I am not known, and as soon as I can send a little money I will send for you and Daphne. Keep your heart up and it will be all right.