Silk’s little piece of pantomime had not had the effect the author intended. In the quick glance which Riddell had given towards the bench and its occupants he had taken in pretty accurately the real state of the case.
“Poor fellow!” said he to himself; “he’s surely in trouble enough without being laid hold of by that cad. Silk thinks I shall fancy he has captured my old favourite. Let him! But if he has captured him he doesn’t seem very sure of him, or he wouldn’t hold him down on the seat like that. I wonder what brings them together here? and I wonder if I had better go and interfere? No, I think I won’t just now.”
And so he walked on, troubled enough to be sure, but not concluding quite as much from what he saw as Wyndham feared or Silk hoped.
As he walked on fellows glared at him from a distance, and others passing closer cut him dead. A few of the most ardent Parrett’s juniors took the liberty of hissing him and one ventured to call out, pointedly, “Who cut the rudder-lines?”
Riddell, however, though he winced under these insults, took little notice of them. He was as determined as ever to wait the confirmation of his suspicions before he unmasked the culprit, and equally convinced that duty and honour both demanded that he should lose not a moment in coming to a conclusion.
It was in the midst of these reflections that the small book which Wyndham had seen him pick up caught his eye. He picked it up mechanically, and after noticing that it appeared to be a notebook, and had no owner’s name in the beginning, carried it with him, and forgot all about it till he reached his study.
Even here it was some time before it again attracted his attention, as its importance was wholly eclipsed by the contents of a note which he found lying on his table, and which ran as follows:
“Dear Riddell,—Will you join us at tea this evening at seven? I expect Fairbairn and Bloomfield.
“Yours faithfully,—
“R. Patrick.”