d turned.

People who have pity and to spare for the murdered body, or for the dupe
who has suffered plunder, think very little of the agony of mind and
the horror of the man who has held a good position, secure and honoured,
and who falls into the bottomless abyss of crime and detection. Hartley
had never considered it before. He was on the side of law and order, and
he was incapable of even dimly visualizing any condition of affairs that
could force him into illegal action, and yet he felt in the darkness
after some comprehension of the mind of the Rector of St. Jude's Parish
Church.

The rain passed over, and the veranda was crossed with strips of yellow
sunlight, the pale washed sunlight of a wet evening, and still the drip
from the eaves fell intermittently with its melancholy noise, so softly
now, as hardly to be heard, and Hartley got up, and, putting on his hat,
walked across the scrunching wet gravel, and out on to the road, making
his way towards the Club.

Far away, gleams of light lay soft over the trees of the park, the green
sad light that is only seen in damp atmospheres. There was no gladness
in the day, only a sense of deficiency and sorrow, even in its lingering
beauty; and the lake that reflected the trees and the sky was deadly
still, with a brooding, waiting stillness. Hartley stopped as he went
towards the further gates of the park, and watched the glassy
reflections with troubled eyes. No breeze touched the woods into
movement, and the long, yellow bars of evening light were full of dim
stillness. The very lifelessness of it affected Hartley strangely.
Except where, here and there, a flash of the low sunset caught the
water, the whole prospect was motionless, and he stood like a man
spellbound by the mystery of its silence.

Hartley had chosen the less frequented road through the Park, and there
was no one in sight when he had stopped to look at the pale sheet of
water with its mirrored reproduction of tree and sky. It held him
strangely, and he felt a curious tension of his nerves, as though
something was going to happen. The thought came, as such thoughts do
come, out of nowhere in particular, and yet Hartley waited with a sense
of discomfort.

When he turned away angry at his own momentary folly, he stooped and
picked up a stone and threw it into the motionless beauty of the water,
breaking it into a quick splash, marring the clearness, and confusing
the straight, low band of gold cloud w