I rushed home. For the first time in my life I could not sleep. Indeed, I scarcely tried to sleep. All night I lay in agony. A thousand thoughts came crowding on my brain. I lost my self-control. I was half stupefied with fear. I wished that there were a hundred miles between my house and Tommy's. More than once, even in the middle of the night, I nearly made a bolt of it. I was so oppressed by the consciousness that he had only to send these policemen five doors along the street, and there was I.
But I did not lose every fragment of common sense. I did not become an utter fool. When the morning came, I was still there to see it out.
Next day I never moved outside the door. I bought all the evening papers. They were selling them in the streets all day. Tommy filled them all. "Arrest of the Three Bridges Murderer!" "Examination before the Magistrates!" They were shouting the words in the streets all day. It seemed that they had taken him to East Grinstead, wherever that might be, early in the morning, and brought him before the magistrates directly they got him there. To me the whole business was amazing. Why had he not told them at once that he had seen me, and put the police on my track? I was close at hand. They could scarcely have failed to find me. So far as he was concerned, there would have been an end of the affair upon the spot.
But Tommy's ways always were beyond my finding out.
What the newspapers called his examination was of the most perfunctory kind. The police simply said that they had arrested him, and he was remanded for a week.
And on Thursday Mr. Townsend was coming to dine.
CHAPTER XXV.
[MR. TOWNSEND'S DOUBLE.]
That Thursday was wet. It drizzled all day long. I was not feeling well. I had had trouble with one of my maids--caught her tampering with a lock, and sent her packing on the spot. Altogether I was feeling run down.
The best of us women get the blues at times!