et, as well as of a small
sum in coin, which last enabled him to pay his fare in a railway that
conveyed him eighty miles away from the asylum. Some trifling remnant
of this money still in his pocket, he then travelled on foot along the
high-road till he came to a town about twenty miles distant from L----;
there he had stayed a day or two, and there he said "that the Devil had
told him to buy a case-knife, which he did." "He knew by that order that
the Devil meant him to do something great." "His Master," as he called
the fiend, then directed him the road he should take. He came to L----,
put up, as he had correctly stated before, at a small inn, wandered at
night about the town, was surprised by the sudden storm, took shelter
under the convent arch, overheard somewhat more of my conversation with
Sir Philip than he had previously deposed,--heard enough to excite his
curiosity as to the casket: "While he listened his Master told him he
must get possession of that casket." Sir Philip had quitted the archway
almost immediately after I had done so, and he would then have attacked
him if he had not caught sight of a policeman going his rounds. He had
followed Sir Philip to a house (Mr. Jeeves's). "His Master told him
to wait and watch." He did so. When Sir Philip came forth, towards the
dawn, he followed him, saw him enter a narrow street, came up to him,
seized him by the arm, demanded all he had about him. Sir Philip tried
to shake him off,--struck at him. What follows I spare the reader. The
deed was done. He robbed the dead man both of the casket and the
purse that he found in the pockets; had scarcely done so when he heard
footsteps. He had just time to get behind the portico of a detached
house at angles with the street when I came up. He witnessed, from his
hiding-place, the brief conference between myself and the policemen,
and when they moved on, bearing the body, stole unobserved away. He was
going back towards the inn, when it occurred to him that it would be
safer if the casket and purse were not about his person; that he asked
his Master to direct him how to dispose of them: that his Master guided
him to an open yard (a stone-mason's) at a very little distance from
the inn; that in this yard there stood an old wych-elm tree, from the
gnarled roots of which the earth was worn away, leaving chinks and
hollows, in one of which he placed the casket and purse, taking from the
latter only two sovereigns and some silve