nity. 'Any more of your
insolence and I'll have you put in irons. I'll attend to you soon
enough for your comfort. Get out of this till I send for you.'

As I looked at his foolish, irritable face I realized that I was fairly
UP against it. Short of assault and battery on everybody I was bound to
submit. I saluted respectfully and was marched away.

The hours I spent in that bare anteroom are like a nightmare in my
recollection. A sergeant was busy at a desk with more buff dockets and
an orderly waited on a stool by a telephone. I looked at my watch and
observed that it was one o'clock. Soon the slamming of a door announced
that the A.P.M. had gone to lunch. I tried conversation with the fat
sergeant, but he very soon shut me up. So I sat hunched up on the
wooden form and chewed the cud of my vexation.

I thought with bitterness of the satisfaction which had filled me in
the morning. I had fancied myself the devil of a fine fellow, and I had
been no more than a mountebank. The adventures of the past days seemed
merely childish. I had been telling lies and cutting capers over half
Britain, thinking I was playing a deep game, and I had only been
behaving like a schoolboy. On such occasions a man is rarely just to
himself, and the intensity of my self-abasement would have satisfied my
worst enemy. It didn't console me that the futility of it all was not
my blame. I was looking for excuses. It was the facts that cried out
against me, and on the facts I had been an idiotic failure.

For of course Ivery had played with me, played with me since the first
day at Biggleswick. He had applauded my speeches and flattered me, and
advised me to go to the Clyde, laughing at me all the time. Gresson,
too, had known. Now I saw it all. He had tried to drown me between
Colonsay and Mull. It was Gresson who had set the police on me in
Morvern. The bagman Linklater had been one of Gresson's creatures. The
only meagre consolation was that the gang had thought me dangerous
enough to attempt to murder me, and that they knew nothing about my
doings in Skye. Of that I was positive. They had marked me down, but
for several days I had slipped clean out of their ken.

As I went over all the incidents, I asked if everything was yet lost. I
had failed to hoodwink Ivery, but I had found out his post office, and
if he only believed I hadn't recognized him for the miscreant of the
Black Stone he would go on in his old ways and play into Blenkiron's