Chapter 24

He did not, however, go on Friday. Dale kept the house under observation off and on all day, and again in the evening. Mr. Barradine went out driving twice; but the carriage brought him back each time. How many more postponements? Would he go to-morrow? Yes, he would go to-morrow; but this involved more delay. It would be useless to follow him to-morrow, because he would never pass through the wood on Sunday. No, he would spend Sunday inside his park-rails, going to the Abbey church, walking about the garden, looking at the stables and the dairy. Moreover, Sunday would be the one dangerous day in the woods--nobody at work, everybody free to wander; young men with their sweethearts coming off the rides for privacy; cottagers with squoils hunting the squirrels all through church time perhaps. Dale ground his teeth, shook his fist at the lighted windows, and thought. "If he does not go to-morrow--I can't wait. My self-control will be exhausted, and I shall certainly do something fullish."

But Mr. Barradine went home that Saturday. Between ten and eleven in the morning the brougham stood at the door, a four-wheeled cab was fetched and loaded with luggage, and the two vehicles drove off round the corner southward on their way to Waterloo. And Dale felt his spirits lightening and a fierce gaiety filling his breast. The time of inaction was nearly over; this hateful sitting down under one's wrongs would not last long now; soon he would be doing something. He took quite a pleasant walk through Chelsea, and over the river to Lambeth, where, after a snack of lunch, he read the newspapers in a Public Library. The Library was a quiet, convenient resort; and yesterday he had written a letter there, to Mr. Ridgett at Rodchurch Post Office--not because he really had anything to communicate, but because it seemed necessary, or at least wise, to send off a letter from London.

He enjoyed a good night's rest, and lay in bed till late on Sunday afternoon. He intended to travel by the mail train--the train that left Waterloo at ten-fifteen, and went through the night dropping post-bags all the way down the line; and it was extremely improbable that he would meet any Rodchurch friends in this train, but he understood that the dangerous part of his proceedings would begin when he got to Waterloo, and he was a little worried, even muddled, as to how and where to change his clothes--or rather to put on that canvas suit over his ordinary clothes. If he made the change here, and any one saw him going out, it might seem a bit odd.

But then his confusion of ideas passed off, and all became clear. He must change at the last possible moment, of course; and he thought, "Why am I so muddled about such simple things? I must pull myself together. Of course I don't mind being seen in London; it is down there that I don't wish to be seen. Anybody is welcome to see me till I'm started, an' perhaps the more people that see me the better."

He therefore shaved, and dressed neatly and carefully; packed his valise with the bowler hat in it, turned up the brim of the common slouch hat and wore it jauntily. The overalls were rolled in an unobtrusive brown-paper parcel to be carried under the arm; and, having paid for his bedroom, he went out at about eight o'clock, walking boldly through the streets--just as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch, dressed in blue serge and not in his best black coat--Mr. Dale dressed for the holidays, with a rakish go-as-you-please soft hat instead of the ceremonious hard-brimmed bowler, and not too proud to carry his bag and parcel for himself.

All straightforward now. It would be still Mr. Dale at Waterloo, depositing the bag at the cloak-room, buying a ticket, and getting into the train with his brown-paper parcel. Only Mr. Dale would get lost on the journey, and a queer shabby customer would emerge at the other end.

But he allowed himself to modify the plan slightly. It was necessary that he should have a good meal and also procure food to take with him, and for these purposes he went to an eating-house in the York Road. This turned out to be just the place he required--a room with tables where diners could sit as long as they chose, a counter spread out with edibles to be absorbed standing, and the company consisting of cabmen from the station ranks, some railway porters, and a few humble travelers.

He ordered a large beef-steak; and he ate like a boa-constrictor, thinking the while: "This ought to stick to my ribs. I can't put away too much now, because it may come to short commons if the luck's against me." Then after the meal there came a temptation to hurry up his program, and get through some of the little difficulties at once. He observed his surroundings. The place was fuller now than when he came in; the atmosphere was thick with tobacco smoke and the steam of hot food; the kitchen was at its busiest; and at the counter the stupid-looking girl in charge was handing over refreshments so fast that it seemed as if soon there would be none left.

He paid a waitress for his supper, and then went into the dark little lavatory behind the room and put on his canvas suit. Coming out into the room again, he intended to say something about having slipped on his overalls for a night job; but nothing of the kind was necessary. Nobody cared, nobody noticed. His difficulty was to make the counter girl attend to him at all. He spoke to her bruskly at last; and then she sold him slices of cold meat, cheese, biscuits, a lot of chocolate and some nuts, with which he filled those two inner pockets of his jacket. They had become his larders now.

There were not more than a dozen passengers in the whole train, and no one on the platform at Waterloo took the faintest notice of him.

No one noticed him three hours later when he left the train at a station short of Manninglea Cross; and soon he was far from other men, striking across the dark country, with the stars high over his head, and his native air blowing into his lungs. He came down over the heath on the Abbey side of the Cross Roads, and reached Hadleigh Wood just before dawn.

He felt at home now, alone with the wild animals, on ground that he had learned the tricks of when he was like a wild animal himself. He knew his wood as well as any of them. He could make lairs beneath the hollies, glide imperceptibly among the trees, crawl on his belly from tussock to tussock, and startle the very foxes by creeping quite close before they smelled peril. So he hid and glided as the sun climbed the sky, and then waited and watched when the sun was high, now here, now there, but always very near the open rides along which people would be passing. And that day many passed, but not the man he wanted.

He was three days and nights in the wood; and on the morning of the fourth day somebody saw him.

He had moved stealthily to the stream to drink, and while creeping back on hands and knees among some holly bushes by a glade, he paused suddenly. Out there on the grass, so small that she had not shown above the lowest bushes, there was a little girl--a child of about five, in a tattered pinafore, picking daisies and making a daisy chain. Breathless and with a beating heart, he watched her, and he dared not move forward into the sunlight or backward into the shade. She had not seen him yet. She was playing with the chain of flowers--a small wood goblin sprung out of nowhere, a little black-haired devil fired up from hell through the solid earth and out into this empty glade to squat there right in his track. Then she stood upon her feet, and admired the length of the chain as she held it dangling.

Then she dropped the chain, gave a little cry like the note of a frightened bird, and scampered away--never looking back.

Never looking back. But she had seen him. He tried to hope that she had not seen him.

He was hungry now. His provisions were exhausted; he had eaten nothing since last night, and he felt excited and fretful. He said to himself: "If to-day my enemy is not delivered into my hands, I must go out into the open and seek him at all risks, at all costs." It was a dominant idea now. Nothing else mattered.

But that day the man came. When the day was almost over, when the whole wood was fading to the neutral tints of dusk, he came. He was on horseback, sitting easily and proudly, and his chestnut horse paced daintily and noiselessly over the moss.

Dale took off his hat. Then presently he came out of the bracken into the ride, gripped the horse by its bridle, and spoke to the rider.

"Halloa! Dale? But, my good fellow, what the deuce--Damn you, let go. What are you trying to--"

"I'll show you. Yes, you"--and violent, obscene, incoherent words came pouring from Dale in a high-pitched querulous voice. All his set speeches had been blown to the clouds by the blast of his passion. All his plans exploded in flame at the sight of the man's face--the eyes that had gloated over Mavis' reluctant body, the lips that had fed on her enforced kisses. But what did the words matter? Any words were sufficient. They could understand each other without words now.

He was holding the bridle firmly, pulling the horse's head round; and he grasped Mr. Barradine's foot, got it out of the stirrup, and jerking the whole leg upward, pitched him out of the saddle. The horse, released, sprang away, jumping this way, that way, as it dashed through the brake to the rocks--the clatter of its hoofs sounded on the rocks, and the last glimpse of it showed its empty saddle and the two flying stirrup-irons.

Dale was mad now--the devil loose in him--only conscious of unappeasable rage and hatred, as he struck with his fists, beating the man down every time he tried to get up, and kicking at the man's head when he lay prostrate.

Then there came a brief pause of extraordinary deep quiet, a sudden cessation of all perceptible sounds and movements. Dale was confused, dazed, breathing hard. That was a dead man sprawling there--what you call a corpse, a bleeding carcass. Dale looked at him. Beneath his last kick, the skull had cracked like a well-tapped egg.

As abruptly as if his legs had been knocked from under him Dale sat down, and endeavored to think.

Then it was as if all his thought and the action resulting from his thought were beyond his control. In all that he did he seemed to be governed by instinct.

At any minute some one might pass by. He must drag the body out of sight. And the instinctive thoughts came rapidly, each one as the necessity for it arose. He must leave no foot-prints, or as few as possible. He unlaced and pulled off his boots, and, noticing the blood on them, made a mental note to wash them as soon as he could find time to do so.

He took the dead man by the heels, and dragged him cautiously toward the rocks--seeking the zigzag line taken by the galloping horse. That was the chance. Instinct directed and explained the task--to make it seem that the horse had dragged him, and battered his life out over the rocks. A good chance. Those stirrups didn't come out. He might truly have been dragged by one of them.

The track of the horse was lost directly the rocks began. Dale left the body, and cautiously clambered upon the rocks to see if any living thing observed him.

Then he took the corpse by the heels again, and hauled it over the jagged surfaces and through the hollows--conscious all the while of great pain--and finally left it in a cleft, staring stupidly upward. He hurried back to the ride, and sat down by the rank-smelling bracken where he had left his boots. He was startled when he looked at his feet--their soles were covered with blood. He thought it was the dead man's blood, but then discovered it was his own. He had torn his feet to pieces on the rocks. He put on his boots in agony, picked up his hat, and limped away through the hollies into the gloom of the pines. Down in the stream, with the water rippling over his ankles, he stood and listened.

What to do next? They had not yet discovered the dead man; but it seemed to him that they would do so in another minute or two. He tried to think logically, but could not. It seemed now necessary to get clear away before the body was seen--get as far off as possible. Vaguely it occurred to him that he should wait here till night, and it was still only dusk. But then he had a clear vision of the wood at night--lanterns moving in every direction, men's voices, a cordon of men all round the wood. Yes, that would be the state of affairs when they had found the body and were beginning to look for the murderer. This wood was a death-trap. He forgot the pain in his feet, and began to run with the long trotting stride of a hunted stag, careless now of the crash of the bushes and fern as he swung through them.

He paused crouching on the edge of the wood, then came out over the bank, across a road, and into the fields. With arched back he went along the deep ditch of the first field, through a gap, and into the ditch of the next field. To his right lay Vine-Pits Farm; to his left lay the Cross Roads, the Barradine Arms, the clustered cottages. He ran on, in ditch after ditch, under hedges and banks, swinging left-handed in a wide detour till he came to the last of the fields and the highroad to Old Manninglea.

But he had to wait here. He saw laborers on the road, and waited till they were gone. Then he crept through the gap where the ditch went under the road culvert, crossed this second road, and ran stooping on the open heath.

The sky was red, with terrible clouds; and a wind followed him, keeping his spine cold, although all the rest of him was burning. When he looked back he fancied that he saw men moving, and that he heard distant shoutings from Beacon Hill. Rain fell--not much of it, just showers, wetting his hands, and mingling with the perspiration in front, but making him colder behind; and he muttered to cheer himself. "That's luck. That'll wash away the blood. Yes, that's luck. Yes, I must take it for a good sign--bit o' luck."

He walked and ran for miles--over the bare downs, through the fertile valleys, and alongside the other railway line; and late that night he got into a feeding train for Salisbury, where, he was told, he would catch a West of England express for London.

There was delay at Salisbury, and he ate some food and drank some brandy.

Then at last he found himself in the London train, in an empty compartment of a corridor coach. He sat with folded arms, his hat pulled low on his forehead, his eyes peering suspiciously out of the window, or at the door of the corridor. Whenever anybody went by in the corridor, he stooped his head lower and pretended to be asleep.

There were strange people in this train--soldiers and sailors from Devonport; some foreigners too, or people dressed up to look like foreigners; numbers of men also who kept their heads down as he was doing, as if for some jolly good private reason. Who the hell were they really? Detectives?

The train was going so fast now that it rocked to and fro, and hummed and sang; but it seemed to Dale to be standing still--to be going backward. This illusion was so strong for some moments that he jumped up and went out into the corridor, to look down at the permanent way on that side also. The lamplight from the train showed on both sides that the sleepers, the chairs, the gravel, slipped and slid in the correct direction. The train was flying, simply flying along the inner up-track of the four sets of metals.

"I mustn't be so fullish," he kept saying to himself. "I'm all safe now."

A sudden noise of voices drew him to the corridor; and he stood holding a hand-rail, watching the leather walls and the gangway that led into the next coach leap and dance and bob and sink, while he listened eagerly. The roar of the train was so great here that he could not catch what the hidden men were saying, but he understood that they were sailors making too much noise and a railway guard rebuking them. "It's nothing to do with me," he said to himself. "Why _am_ I so fullish?"

He returned to the compartment, sat with his shoulder to the corridor, and brooded dully and heavily. All that fiery trouble about Mavis and her being dishonored had gone out of his mind as if forever; the grievance and the rage and the hatred had gone too; temporarily there was nothing but a most ponderous self-pity.

"What a mess this is," he thought. "What a hash I've made of it. What a cruel thing to happen to me. What an awful hole I've put myself into."

The train swept onward, and he began to doze. Then after a while he slept and dreamed. He dreamed that he was here in this train, not fettered, but spell-bound, unable to move and hide, only able to understand what was happening and to suffer from his perception of the hideous predicament that he was in. Another train, on another of the four tracks, was racing after this train, was overhauling it, was infallibly catching it. Mysteriously he could see into this following, hunting train--it was a train full of policemen, magistrates, wardens, judges, hangmen: all the offended majesty of the law.

He woke shivering, after this first taste of a murderer's dreams. His punishment had begun.

It was daylight at Waterloo, and he slunk in terror; but things had to be done. He washed himself as well as he could, took off his dirty canvas, got his bag from the cloak-room and hurried away. No questions were asked, no bones made about giving him a room at a house in Stamford Street; and he at once went to bed and slept profoundly.

When he woke this time he was quite calm, and able to think clearly again.

He went out late in the afternoon, and saw a message for him on newspaper bills: "Fatal Accident to ex-Cabinet Minister." Then, having bought a paper, he read the very brief report of the accident. He stood gasping, and then drew deep breaths. The _Accident_. Oh, the joy of seeing that word! No suspicion so far. It was working out just as one might hope.

And it seemed that his courage, so lamentably shaken, began to return to him. He felt more himself. He marched off to a post office, and sent his telegram to Mavis: "Evening paper says fatal accident to Mr. Barradine. Is this true?" The main purpose of the telegram was to prove that here he was in London, where he had been last Friday, and where he had remained during all the intervening time; its secondary purpose was to put on record at the earliest possible moment his surprise--surprise so complete that he could scarcely believe the sad news. He gave his utmost care to the wording of the telegram and was satisfied with the result. The turn of words seemed perfectly natural.

Then, having despatched his telegram, he hurried off to call at Mr. Barradine's house in Grosvenor Place--to make some anxious inquiries.

There were people at the door, ladies and gentlemen among them, and the servants looked white and agitated as they answered questions. Dale pushed his way up the steps almost into the hall, acting consternation and grief--the honest, rather rough country fellow, the loyal dependent who forgets his good manners in his sorrow at the death of the chieftain. He would not go away, when the other callers had departed. He told the butler of the services rendered to him by Mr. Barradine. "Not more'n ten days ago."

"Don't you remember me? I came here to thank him for his kindness."

"Ah, yes," said the agitated butler, "he was a kind gentleman, and no mistake."

"_Kind!_ I should think he was. Well, well!" And Dale stood nodding his head dolefully. Then he went away slowly and sadly, and he kept on nodding his head in the same doleful manner long after the door was shut--just on the chance that the servants might look out of the hail windows and see it before he vanished round the corner.

He could think now, as well as he had ever done. It was of prime importance that no outsiders should ever learn that Everard Barradine had injured him. This guided him henceforth. It settled the course of his life there and then. He must return to Mavis; he must by his demeanor cover the intrigue--or so act that if people came to know of it, they would suppose either that he was ignorant of his shame or that he was a complaisant husband, taking advantage of the situation and pocketing all gifts from his wife's protector. No motive for the crime. That was his guide-post.

In the night he got rid of the canvas suit and slouch hat. Next day he went home to Rodchurch Post Office, and, speaking to Mavis of Mr. Barradine's death, uttered that terrific blasphemy. "_It is the finger of God._"

XXXI

He acted his part well, and everything worked out easily--more easily than one could have dared to hope for.

Not a soul was thinking about him. He had to assert himself, thrust himself forward, before people in the village would so much as notice that he had come back among them again. The inquest, as he gathered, was going to be a matter of form: it seemed doubtful if the authorities would even make an examination of the ground over there. All was to be as nice as nice for him.

Yet he was afraid. Fear possed him--this sneaking, torturing, emasculating passion that he had never known hitherto was now always with him. He lay alone in the camp-bedstead sweating and funking. The events of the day made him seem safe, but he felt that he would not be really safe for ages and ages. Throughout the night he was going over the list of his idiotic mistakes, upbraiding himself, cursing himself for a hundred acts of brainless folly. The plan had been sound enough: it was the accomplishment of the plan that had been so damnably rotten.

Why had he changed his addresses in that preposterous fashion? Instead of providing himself with useful materials for an alibi, he had just made a lot of inexplicable movements. Then the pawning of the watch--in a false name. How could he ever explain _that_? Anybody short of money may put his ticker up the spout, but no one has the right to assume an alias. And the buying of the clothes and hat. Instead of bargaining, as innocent people do, however small the price demanded, he just dabbed down the money. He must have appeared to be in the devil's own hurry to get the things and cut off with them. The two men at that shop must have noticed his peculiarities as a customer. They would be able to pick him out in the biggest crowd that ever assembled in a magistrate's court.

But far worse had been his watchings and prowlings round and about the house in Grosvenor Place. Could he have blundered upon anything more full of certain peril? Why, to stand still for ten minutes in London is to invite the attention of the police. Their very motto or watchword is "Move on;" and for every policeman in helmet and buttons there are three policemen in plain clothes to make sure that people _are_ moving on. While watching that house he had been watched himself.

Then, again, the insane episode of the eating-house--the wild hastening of his program, the untimely change of appearance in that thronged room--and his rudeness to the woman behind the counter. With anguish he remembered, or fancied he remembered, that she had looked at him resentfully seeming to say as she studied his face. "I'm sizing you up. Yes, I won't forget you--you brute."