the time, then, they may be left to progress uninterruptedly
to safety and not very prompt enlightenment; the flight of the
self-confessed murderer calls for more immediate attention. Probably,
after the first moment of suspense, and when he was sure that escape
was still not utterly impracticable, he intended to cross the park to
the northwest and climb the boundary wall. But a glimpse of the black
line of trees daunted him. He simply dared not face those pitiless
sentinels again. He pictured himself forcing a way through the
undergrowth in the dense gloom and failing perhaps; for the vegetation
was wilder there than in any other portion of the estate. So, making a
detour, he headed for the unencumbered parkland once more, and gained
the wall near Jackson's farm about the time that Trenholme and Sylvia
entered the avenue.

He was unquestionably in a parlous state. Bare-headed, unarmed, he
could not fail to attract attention in a district where every resident
knew the other, nor could he resist capture when the hue and cry went
forth. What to do he knew not. Even if he managed to reach the railway
station unchallenged, the last train of the day had left for London
soon after eleven, and the earliest next morning was timed for five
o'clock, too late by many hours to serve his desperate need.

Could he hire a motor car or bicycle? The effort was fraught with
every variety of risk. There was a small garage at Easton, but those
cunning detectives would be raising the countryside already, and the
telephone would close every outlet. For the first time in his life
Hilton Fenley realized that the world is too small to hold a murderer.
He was free, would soon have the choice of a network of main roads and
lanes in a rural district at the dead hour of the night, yet he felt
himself securely caged as some creature of the jungle trapped in a
pit.

Crossing Jackson's farmyard, not without disturbing a dog just
quieting down after the preceding racket, he hurried into the village
street, having made up his mind to face the inevitable and arouse the
garage keeper. By the irony of fate he passed the cottage in which
Police Constable Farrow was lying asleep and utterly unaware of the
prevalent excitement, to join in which he would have kept awake all
that night and the next.

Then the turn of Fortune's wheel befriended Fenley again. Outside a
house stood Dr. Stern's car, a closed-in runabout in which both the
doctor and his chauff