He stood stolidly by the table while the Sergeant proceeded with his examination of the room; once, only, he volunteered a statement.
“He seemed proper upset when he came down to the station,” he remarked thoughtfully.
The Sergeant looked round sharply.
“In what way, upset?”
Gunnet’s ruddy face took on an even deeper hue in his efforts to express himself clearly.
“Startled like, as any one would be that had found a thing like this in his room. More excited than guilty, if you understand me. By the time we got back here he was acting quite natural. Lit the fire and made coffee and all while we was waiting for you. I shouldn’t say he acted suspicious.”
If the Sergeant held any opinion on the subject, he kept it to himself. He finished his examination of the room and moved to the door.
“Nothing here,” he said. “Give me your lantern and I’ll have a look outside. You stay and keep an eye on things here. Come on, Collins.”
He went out, followed by the man he had brought from Whitbury, a young Constable, fresh to his job and awed into silence by the magnitude of his first case.
Meanwhile John Leslie sat huddled over the stove in the kitchen, half asleep. It seemed to him as if this pleasant country life to which he had retired so thankfully after four hideous years of warfare had suddenly merged itself into a nightmare which would never end. His one longing was for bed and sleep and yet even that seemed out of the question so long as the farm housed that tragic figure. Meanwhile there seemed nothing for it but to hang about until all this sordid official procedure was over.