He made a similar examination of those parts of the lawn on which he had stepped, except the path leading to the well, the inspection of which he kept for the last. He brushed up the trodden grass and carefully smoothed the trampled earth.
He was obviously anxious and seemed to be thinking of other things, while at the same time mechanically doing those things which a murderer knows by force of habit that it is wise to do.
One little incident seemed to wake him up. A wounded swallow fell to the ground close by where he stood. He stooped, caught it, and crushed it in his hands, kneading it like a scrap of crumpled paper. And his eyes shone with a savage delight as he gazed at the blood that trickled from the poor bird and reddened his hands.
But, when he flung the shapeless little body into a furze bush, he saw on the spikes in the bush a hair, a long, fair hair; and all his depression returned at the memory of Florence.
He knelt in front of the ruined grotto. Then, breaking two sticks of wood, he placed the pieces in the form of a cross under one of the stones.
As he was bending over, a little looking-glass slipped from his waistcoat pocket and, striking a pebble, broke. This sign of ill luck made a great impression on him, He cast a suspicious look around him and, shivering with nervousness, as though he felt threatened by the invisible powers, he muttered:
"I'm afraid—I'm afraid. Let's go away—"
His watch now marked half-past four. He took his jacket from the shrub on which he had hung it, slipped his arms into the sleeves, and put his hand in the right-hand outside pocket, where he had placed the pocket-book containing his papers:
"Hullo!" he said, in great surprise. "I was sure I had—"
He felt in the left outside pocket, then in the handkerchief-pocket, then, with feverish excitement, in both the inside pockets. The pocket-book was not there. And, to his extreme amazement, all the other things which he was absolutely certain that he had left in the pockets of his jacket were gone: his cigarette-case, his box of matches, his notebook.