said nothing about coming to Braster. Yet, there he was,
without luggage, with his arm and head bound up. Just like this I
expected to see the man whom I had struck last night.

Now though Ray's attitude towards me was often puzzling, an absolute
faith in his honesty was the one foundation which I had felt solid
beneath my feet during these last few weeks of strange happenings. This
was the first blow which my faith had received, and I felt that at any
cost I must know the truth. After lunch I finished the papers which,
when complete, it was my duty to lock away in the library safe up at the
house, and secured them in my breast-pocket. But instead of going at
once to the house I set out for Braster Junction.

There was a porter there whom I had spoken to once or twice. I called
him on one side.

"Can you tell me," I asked, "what passengers there were from London by
the newspaper train this morning?"

"None at all, sir," the man answered readily.

"Are you quite sure?" I asked.

The man smiled.

"I'm more than sure, sir," the man answered, "because she never stopped.
She only sets down by signal now, and we had the message 'no passengers'
from Wells. She went through here at forty miles an hour."

"I was expecting Colonel Ray by that train," I remarked, "the gentleman
who lectured on the war, you know, at the Village Hall."

The man looked at me curiously.

"Why, he came down last night, same train as you, sir. I know, because
he only got out just as the train was going on, and he stepped into the
station master's house to light his pipe."

"Thank you," I said, giving the man a shilling. "I must have just
missed him, then."

I left the station and walked home. Now, indeed, all my convictions
were upset. Colonel Ray had left me outside his clubhouse last night,
twenty minutes before the train started, without a word of coming to
Braster. Yet he travelled down by the same train, avoided me, lied to
Lady Angela and myself this morning, and had exactly the sort of wounds
which I had inflicted upon that unknown assailant who attacked me in the
darkness. If circumstantial evidence went for anything, Ray himself had
been my aggressor.

I avoided the turn by Braster Grange and went straight on to the
village. Coming out of the post office I found myself face to face with
Blanche Moyat. She held out her hand eagerly.

"Were you coming in?" she asked.

"Well, not to-day," I answered. "I am on my way to Rowchest