another moment
he heard, "Henry Meats ... I hold a warrant ... murder of Cissie ...
anything you say ... used against you," all in the mumbo-jumbo of a
nightmare.

Michael came down the steps again very quickly; and Barnes, now
handcuffed, turned to him despairingly.

"Tell 'em my name isn't Meats, Fane. Tell 'em they've made a mistake.
Oh, my God, I never done it! I never done it!"

The two men were pushing him, dead white, crumpled, sobbing, into the
taxi; he seemed very small beside the big men with their square
shoulders and bristly mustaches. Michael heard him still moaning as the
taxi jangled and whirred abruptly forward. The third man watched it
disappear between the two walls; then he strolled up the steps to enter
the house. Mrs. Cleghorne was already in the hall, and over the
balusters of each landing faces could be seen peering down. As if the
word were uttered by the house itself, "murder" floated in a whisper
upon the air. The faces shifted; doors opened and shut far above;
footsteps hurried to and fro; and still of all these sounds "murder" was
the most audible.

"This is the gentleman who rents the rooms," Mrs. Cleghorne was saying.

"But I've not been near them till yesterday evening for six months,"
Michael hurriedly explained.

"That's quite right," Mrs. Cleghorne echoed.

"Well, I'm afraid we must go through them," said the officer.

"Oh, of course."

"Let me see, is this your address?"

"Well, no--Cheyne Walk--173."

"We might want to have a little talk with you about this here Meats."

Michael was enraged with himself for not asseverating "Barnes! Barnes!
Barnes!" as he had been begged to do. He despised himself for not trying
to save that white crumpled thing huddled between those big men with
their bristly mustaches; yet all the while he felt violently afraid that
the police officer would think him involved in these disgraceful rooms,
that he would suppose the pictures and the tawdry furniture belonged to
him, that he would imagine the petticoats and underlinen strewn about
the floor had something to do with him.

"If you want me," he found himself saying, "you have my address."

Quickly he hurried away from Leppard Street, and traveled in a trance of
shame to Hardingham. Alan was just going in to bat, when Michael walked
across from the Hall to the cricket-field.

Stella came from her big basket chair to greet him, and for a while he
sat with her in the buttercups, watching Ala