ere all those
photographs of girls had subtly suggested the questioning doubts that
led him on to suspicion and discovery. The man would come again to
this room, with his tired eyes and baggy cheeks and drooping lip;
would stare contemptuously; and at the first words of abuse, he would
ring a bell, call for servants, call for the police, and have the
visitor ignominiously turned out. "Policeman, this ruffian has been
threatening me. He is an ill-conditioned dog that I've been
systematically kind to, and he now seems to have taken leave of his
senses and accuses me of injuring him. For the sake of his wife, who
is a good respectful sort of person, I do not give him in charge. But
I ask you to keep an eye on him. And if he dares to return to my door,
just cart him off to the police station." No, that would not do at
all. He and Mr. Barradine must meet somewhere quietly and
comfortably, out of reach of electric bells, butlers, and police
officers.

That first night after the confession he slept sound and long. In the
morning when he woke, feeling refreshed and strengthened, his
determination to bring about the interview had assumed an iron
firmness, as if all night it had been beaten on the anvil of his
thoughts while he lay idle. But he was no nearer to devising a scheme
that should give effect to the determination.

Mr. Barradine had said that he was going down to the Abbey to-morrow,
or next day, Friday, at latest; and in the course of this Wednesday
morning Dale decided that the interview must be delayed. It was
impossible up here. It would be much easier to arrange down there. He
must wait until Mr. Barradine went down to Hampshire, and go down
after him. He could call at the Abbey, where the man would be more
accessible than up here; and, by restraining himself, by simulating
his usual manner, by lulling the man to a false security, he could
lure him out of the house--get him out into the open air, away from
his servants, perhaps beyond the gardens and as far off as the park
copses. Then when they were alone, they two, at a distance from the
possibility of interruption, Dale could drop the mask of subservience,
turn upon him, and say "Now--"

No, that would not do. It was all childish. For a thousand obscure
reasons it would not do at all.

Then, brooding over his wife's confession--the things she had merely
hinted at as well as the things she had explicitly stated--he
remembered how in the beginning the wood n