ommittee's work, could he
afford any the more to thwart her in her private concerns? Plainly not.
There also he was bound to help.

So the picture formed itself; and the last bit to fit in, and thereby to
give completeness, was what I had seen that night--the strange
complaisance of Octon toward the intolerable Powers. Did Octon smoke his
pipe in Powers's house and drink Powers's whisky for nothing? That
"friendly glass"--what was its significance?

This was work for a spy or a detective. I thrust the idea away from me.
But the idea would not depart. A man must use his senses--nay, they use
themselves. The more I sought to banish the explanation, the more
insolently it seemed to stare me in the face. "Pick a hole in me, if you
can!" it challenged. The hole was hard to pick.

CHAPTER XI

THE SIGNAL AT "DANGER"

Alison lost little time in making his promised attack on Jenny; he was
not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. It might be improper
to say that he chose the wrong moment--for no moment could be wrong from
his point of view, and the one most wrong from a worldly aspect might
well be to his mind the supremely right. Yet according to that purely
worldly standpoint the time was unfortunate. Jenny had a great many
other things to think of--very pressing things: as to many of us, so to
her, her religious position perhaps seemed a matter which could wait.
Moreover--by a whimsical chance--the Rector ran up against another
difficulty: to Jenny it was a refuge, of which she availed herself with
her usual dexterity. When one attack pressed her, I am convinced that
she absolutely welcomed the advent of another from the opposite
direction. Between the two she might slip out unhurt; at any rate, if
one assailant called on her to surrender, she could bid him deal with
the other first. The analogy is not exact--but there was a family
likeness between her balancing of Fillingford against Octon and the way
in which, assailed by Alison, she interposed, as a shield, the views
urged on her by Mrs. Jepps. Displayed in a less serious campaign--less
serious, I mean, to Jenny's thinking--yet it was, in essence, the same
strategy--and it was a strategy pretty to watch. Be it remarked that
Jenny was busy keeping friends with everybody during these anxious
weeks.

Mrs. Jepps--if I have said it before, it will bear repetition--was a
power in Catsford, in the town itself. She might be said to lead the
distinctively to