“You need not do that,” said Pelham. He shrugged his shoulders, took his pocket-book out of his pocket, tore a leaf from it and wrote a few words.
“Darling,—I am called to town on sudden business. Do not be uneasy. I hope to return to-morrow.
“Yours, Dick.”
He folded the note and gave it to a gardener who was passing.
“Take this to the house,” he said, “and tell the servants to deliver it to your mistress when she returns.”
The man took it without the least apparent curiosity and went away. Then Pelham turned to the police constable.
“I am at your service,” he said. “I presume you will not think it necessary to handcuff me?”
“I think you are to be trusted, sir,” said the man.
Pelham nodded, and the ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. A moment later he was driving to Haversham in the company of the two police constables. When they reached the station they took tickets in a third-class compartment; one of them tipped the guard to allow them to have it to themselves.
Dick sat in a corner and kept looking out at the landscape. Surely this was a dream, and he would wake presently to find it was so. His thoughts were busy, but not greatly with himself. He felt a certain sense of satisfaction. His old suspicions were right—there was something unnatural about the death of the child. It was strange why he was arrested. Of course, he was the wrong man—Tarbot was the guilty person. Why had they arrested him? This journey was unpleasant, but to-morrow, at the farthest, before the magistrate, he, Dick Pelham, would be abundantly cleared. Tarbot, beyond doubt, was the guilty person.