he meeting between
Stoner and himself. No one had seen the blow. No one had seen Stoner's
fall. Far better to say nothing, do nothing--far best to go away and let
things take their course. Stoner's body would be found, next day, the
day after, some day--and when it was found, people would say that Stoner
had been sitting on those rotten railings, and they had given way, and
he had fallen--and whatever marks there were on him would be attributed
to the fall down the sharp edges of the old quarry.

So Mallalieu presently went away by another route, and made his way back
to Highmarket in the darkness of the evening, hiding himself behind
hedges and walls until he reached his own house. And it was not until he
lay safe in bed that night that he remembered the loss of his stick.

CHAPTER XVII

THE MEDICAL OPINION

The recollection of that stick plunged Mallalieu into another of his
ague-like fits of shaking and trembling. There was little sleep for him
after that: he spent most of the night in thinking, anticipating, and
scheming. That stick would almost certainly be found, and it would be
found near Stoner's body. A casual passer-by would not recognize it, a
moorland shepherd would not recognize it. But the Highmarket police, to
whom it would be handed, would know it at once to be the Mayor's: it was
one which Mallalieu carried almost every day--a plain, very stout oak
staff. And the police would want to know how it came to be in that
quarry. Curse it!--was ever anything so unfortunate!--however could he
have so far lost his head as to forget it? He was half tempted to rise
in the middle of the night and set out for the moors, to find it. But
the night was dark, and solitary as the moors and the quarry where he
dared not risk the taking of a lantern. And so he racked his brains in
the effort to think of some means of explaining the presence of the
stick. He hit on a notion at last--remembering suddenly that Stoner had
carried neither stick nor umbrella. If the stick were found he would
say that he had left it at the office on the Saturday, and that the
clerk must have borrowed it. There was nothing unlikely in that: it was
a good reason, it would explain why it came to be found near the body.
Naturally, the police would believe the word of the Mayor: it would be a
queer thing if they didn't, in Mallalieu's opinion. And therewith he
tried to go to sleep, and made a miserable failure of it.

As he lay tossing and