I stared at her as at a miracle, which indeed she was. “Come, come; this is on the thick side. You must have been shadowing me.”
“Only in brain-waves. It was your copy of the Book of Sylvan Armitage, wasn’t it? How did you happen to leave it there? I can guess you had it out of your knapsack and studied it for comparison with the place you had fallen to. Then, perhaps, you laid it down—”
“I did, and leaned back to rest, just as I found you doing this afternoon. The Book slipped off the stone and fell inside the shelter of the oratory. I didn’t notice it when I started up and left the place. But how on earth did you know?”
“You mustn’t think it was so wonderful for me to see a plain nose on a plain face. To begin with, I was surprised to death when I learned that you hadn’t brought your own copy of the Armitage with you, but had to send for it from Balzing. Was it likely that you would leave behind the one work which referred to the oratory of St. Tarw? Then that evening in the library after the rainbow, some of Lib’s remarks—‘Having the hump,’ and so forth—sounded as if you might be concealing something that you had brought with you under your coat. And finally—well this alone would have been enough to tell me—the day you were supposed to receive it through the mail, you didn’t call at the Post Office for it; when you came home from Old Aidenn, you gave New Aidenn a wide berth and crossed the Smatcher.”
“Out of my own inkwell I stand condemned,” I laughed. “It’s uncanny, that’s what it is, the way you get inside my cranium and read my secret thoughts. Still, you haven’t told me what the fundamental deduction was. It couldn’t have been a mere guess. How did you know that I wasn’t on Whimble when I drew the map?”
“I think you are playing Doctor Watson on purpose. Why, that was the essence of simplicity. Why, a primitive mind could have told that. What do you suppose I brought the campstool for? It was as simple as—as rule of three. You’ll have to discover that for yourself.”
After silence:
“What was that you said—about the rapture you felt the first time you wandered on the uplands? You never could feel the same freedom? You never could be so happy again?”
“I think I never shall.”
“Nor I. I hate this place. It has robbed me of something—something more than love or any little thing like that.”