HAPTER XXVI

THORPE walked along, in the remoter out-of-the-way parts of the great
gardens, as the first shadows of evening began to dull the daylight.
For a long time he moved aimlessly about, sick at heart and benumbed of
mind, in the stupid oppression of a bad dream.

There ran through all his confused thoughts the exasperating
consciousness that it was nonsense to be frightened, or even disturbed;
that, in truth, nothing whatever had happened. But he could not lay hold
of it to any comforting purpose. Some perverse force within him insisted
on raising new phantoms in his path, and directing his reluctant gaze
to their unpleasant shapes. Forgotten terrors pushed themselves upon his
recollection. It was as if he stood again in the Board Room, with the
telegram telling of old Tavender's death in his hands, waiting to hear
the knock of Scotland Yard upon the door.

The coming of Gafferson took on a kind of supernatural aspect, when
Thorpe recalled its circumstances. His own curious mental ferment, which
had made this present week a period apart in his life, had begun in the
very hour of this man's approach to the house. His memory reconstructed
a vivid picture of that approach--of the old ramshackle village trap,
and the boy and the bags and the yellow tin trunk, and that decent,
red-bearded, plebeian figure, so commonplace and yet so elusively
suggestive of something out of the ordinary. It seemed to him now
that he had at the time discerned a certain fateful quality in the
apparition. And he and his wife had actually been talking of old Kervick
at the moment! It was their disagreement over him which had prevented
her explaining about the new head-gardener. There was an effect of the
uncanny in all this.

And what did Gafferson want? How much did he know? The idea that perhaps
old Kervick had found him out, and patched up with him a scheme of
blackmail, occurred to him, and in the unreal atmosphere of his mood,
became a thing of substance. With blackmail, however, one could always
deal; it was almost a relief to see the complication assume that guise.
But if Gafferson was intent upon revenge and exposure instead? With such
a slug-like, patient, tenacious fool, was that not more likely?

Reasonable arguments presented themselves to his mind ever and again:
his wife had known of Gafferson's work, and thought highly of it, and
had been in a position to learn of his leaving Hadlow. What more natural
than that she sh