"But you must be utterly mistaken," cried Mary. "Professor Fish brought him to us. It's impossible."
"Case of Fish and foul," suggested the youth. "But I'm not mistaken. The man I mean has lost the tip of his ear, the left one. Somebody bit it off, I believe. Now, have you noticed your chap's ear?"
He looked at her acutely, and she colored in hot distress.
"I see you have," he said. "I'd ask this Fish person for an explanation, if I were you; particularly as Woolley is supposed to be dead. The police want him pretty badly, you know. It looks queer, doesn't it?"
"I—I can't understand it," said Mary. "I'm sure there's a mistake somewhere."
Young Wylde nodded. "We'll call it a mistake," he said. "He was injured on the Underground in London and taken to St. Brigid's Hospital, where he died. I remember reading about it. Now, of course, I shan't say anything to anybody; but you ought to have an explanation. Fish—is that his name—seems to have played it pretty low down on you." He gathered up his bridle and nodded to her with intent.
"Good afternoon, Miss Pond," he said. "Sorry to make trouble, but I couldn't leave you in the dark about a thing like this."
Mary walked on to the churchyard in considerable bewilderment. With the character of a patient who came under her care she had no particular concern; a nurse must be as little discriminating as death. But she did not like the story; it troubled and offended her— its connexion with matters that interested the police, and all its suggestion that she and her father were being used as a means of hiding, touched her with a sense of disgust. It did not occur to her to doubt Harry Wylde; he had been altogether too circumstantial to be doubted.
She reached the low wall that separated the churchyard from the road. The old graces, with their tombstones leaning awry, like gapped, uneven teeth, reminded her of her errand, and soon she saw Smith. He had found himself a seat where an old tomb with railings and monument was overrun with ground ivy; he sat among the coarse green of it, staring before him with his chin propped on one hand. All the glory of the western sky was beyond him; his profile stood out against it like a sharp silhouette. Mary stopped to look, and for the time forgot the wretched story she had just heard. The man was as motionless as the stone on which he sat-still with such a stillness as one sees not in the living. But it was not that which held. Mary gazing; it came suddenly to her that in his attitude there was something apt; and significant, something with a meaning, requiring only a key to interpret it. She wondered about it, vaguely, and without framing words for her thoughts it occurred to her that the stillness, the attitude, the mute surrender that spoke in every contour of the silhouetted figure, the very posture of rest, bespoke contentment, tile welcome of relief which one feels on reaching one's own place, one's familiar atmosphere, one's due haven.
Minutes passed, and still she stood gazing; then, as though restive under the impressions that invaded her, she moved forward and entered the churchyard. It was not till she stood before him that Smith was aware of her; with a wrinkling of his brow and a sigh, he came back to his surroundings. Mary saw and noted how the raptness of his face gave way to its usual feebleness as he roused himself.