So there was nothing for it but to go on alone. Against Ian I felt not the slightest resentment. I had most unfairly dragged him into my affairs by playing upon whatever trace of romanticism remained in him; the point at which my plan was bound to appear to him sheer irresponsibility was soon reached. But I could not help feeling rejected. What I wanted was impossible — to repeat war, to know, as it were, that at least in London I was honored and trusted. And London and Ian had been the same thing.

I did not know what to do. To mark time and be careful was all I could do. I decided to return to my cottage for the night. My opponent, whatever his source of intelligence, could hardly spot the single night I had passed with Ian; but if I stayed longer he might get onto it. I did not want him to find out that I had been accompanied by such a formidable friend at the badger sett. Ian’s past was well known.

All the surroundings of Hernsholt now seemed to me puzzling and unfriendly; they refused, like so much at the heart of England, to be defined. Forest when seen from ground level. The tamest farming country when seen from the top of a tree. How was I to go to work within these subtle enclosures of life as well as fields? I admired that cruel devil who thought that burning alive was the right death for me. He was able to find his way through subtleties singlehanded and confidently, backed by his money and — of this I was now certain — an impregnable social position.

My own affinities with Jim Melton, I reflected sourly, were probably closer than with Ian and his kind — though whether that was because I had been brought up to laugh at the middle classes and their obsession with legal forms or because I was a fish out of water, I could not decide.

The thought of Jim Melton reminded me that he was better than nothing; indeed he might be better than anything. I walked over to see Ferrin and found him building a greenhouse in the garden behind his pub when he certainly ought to have been weeding his vegetables. He was that sort of gardener.

I asked him where I could find Jim Melton.

“Predestination, that’s what it is,” he answered drily. “The more I live round here, the more I’m certain nobody has any free will except me. Blowed if I don’t write to the Church Times about it one day! Jim said to me after you left that you’d be asking for him sometime soon, and if you did I was to send you round to his cottage.”

He gave me Jim’s address. It was a yellow-brick Council house on the road to Stony Stratford. I should have expected him to live in a derelict gamekeeper’s cottage in the middle of nowhere.

“Not he!” Ferrin said. “You wouldn’t catch Jim putting up with an old-fashioned place if he could work himself into a new one with the rate-payers paying half his rent for him.”

“I want an hour or two of his time. It will be expensive, I suppose?”

“That’s for Jim to say. But I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Dennim, he’s taken a liking to you.”

“I wonder why.”

“Ever seen an animal you couldn’t get on with?”

“Lots.”

“One that was free to be got on with, if you see what I mean?”

I did. It was well put. I certainly do not offend tame animals, and I have noticed — though the observation is worthless since it cannot be measured by statistics — that by wild creatures my presence, even when it is known, seems to be easily accepted. But I do not wish to sound like some dear old lady who claims that all cats love her. Why in the world shouldn’t they?

“Well, Jim —he doesn’t think,” Ferrin went on, “not what you and I would call thinking. He believes in his comfort, mind you, and when it comes to a deal he’s sharp. But he couldn’t tell you what makes him tick any more than his jackdaw could.”

The jackdaw was first with a greeting when I opened Jim Melton’s garden gate. It furiously attacked my ankles, pecked the hand I put down and then walked straight up my arm onto my shoulder.

Two small female Meltons, who were busy filling a doll’s pram with water, regarded this with interest.

“Mind yer ear, mister,” one said.

This was suspiciously like a word of command to the jackdaw, which gave me a sharp nip.

“Didn’t say no more than damn-you,” complained the other little girl, disappointed.

“What do visitors usually say?” I asked.

I was told. I wouldn’t have inquired if I could have guessed what was going to come out of those rosebud mouths.

“Thought you might be along, Perfesser,” said Jim Melton, appearing from the back of the house.

The jackdaw danced on my shoulder and repeated the expression it had just heard. The sounds were not really intelligible, though it made a fair shot at the word “bastard.”

“And if I am, what the hell’s it got to do with you?” Jim said. “You mind yer own business! Mother!”

Mrs. Melton came out of the front door. She was oddly dressed in a very dirty but quite well-fitting coat and skirt. The coat was longer than was fashionable and faintly suggested 1914. Her gray-streaked, tan-colored hair was the same shade as her face, apart from the red on her cheekbones. The coat and the coloring strongly suggested English gipsy blood.

“Can’t offer you a drink,” Jim apologized. “She won’t ‘ave a drop in the house.”

Mrs. Melton and I shook hands and exchanged smiles. The local prohibition was probably wise. Then she sorted out the Miss Meltons with some proper remarks on language before gentlemen. The water in the doll’s pram turned out to be a time-and-motion experiment; it was easier to take the bath to the puppy than the puppy, who didn’t like it, to the bath. But the pram leaked. I suggested the old fairy-tale remedy of stopping it with moss and daubing it with clay. Mrs. Melton, who was just leading up to all the usual mother’s remarks about playing with water, had from politeness to leave them unsaid.

All this seemed to have acted as sufficient introduction, so when I was alone with Jim I went straight to the point.

“Where did he hire his horse?”

“Now, that’s just what I asks after you and me had our little talk,” Jim replied, “because if I knew enough about that ‘orse to tell the old girl out Blixworth way that it was quiet and going cheap, I’d be doing a favor to you and meself.”

He gave me a horse-coper’s wink which dated from the last century and waited for questions. I said that I supposed he knew most of the livery stables within easy riding of Fred Gorble’s place.

“I do. And that’s as much as to say I know where the ‘orse didn’t come from. So I guessed where he did. Right second time! He ‘ired that ‘orse from Boscastle’s stables in Woburn.”

Jim had turned up at the stables soon after lunch.

Having a perfect excuse for inquiries, he had been able to show as much interest in the hirer as the horse.

The well-dressed stranger had given his name as Mr. fforde-Crankshaw. He had been fussy about the spelling with two little “f’s”; otherwise his manner was unassuming and natural. I thought fforde-Crankshaw was a fine invention —in character, impressive, but not too impressive.

He had hired the horse on the excuse of getting his weight down. Every morning he turned up about nine, rode off and came back before dark. As he paid well, was an experienced horseman and never brought his mount in tired, the proprietor of the livery stables was not worried and would indeed have been delighted — being short of competent staff — to let him exercise his horses free of charge.

Generally he had telephoned for a taxi and caught a ten o’clock train back to London. But on Wednesday night he had not returned till eleven, explaining that he had been dining with friends and that the horse had been well looked after. He had then taken a taxi to Watford and presumably picked up a train there.

Last night — Thursday night —after saying that he might not be back for some days, he had simply vanished while the horse was being unsaddled. The stables did not know how he had returned to London and supposed he had been given a lift by a friend.