I had had a bad fright. I was hurt and shaken. So I went without thinking to Safety—not to the form of safety adapted to the case, but to Safety in general. And that meant my burrow; darkness, rest, freedom from pursuit. I hadn’t a thought—any more than, I suppose, the fox has such a thought—that the earth might mean death. Under the influence of panic when Quive-Smith shot me I had behaved in the same way, but then it was excusable. I didn’t know what the devil I was up against, and to seek general Safety was as sound as any other move. To seek it now was simply a reflex action.

I took, of course, the most beautiful and cunning route; the animal could be trusted to perform that futility to perfection. I went through water and through sheep. I waited in cover to be sure there was no pursuit. I knew finally and definitely that there was no pursuit; that I was alone on the down above my lane. Then I covered the last lap with extreme caution and entered my burrow with attention to every dead leaf and every blade of grass.

All the next day I remained underground, congratulating myself on my good fortune. The stench and dirt were revolting, but I endured them with a holy masochism. I persuaded myself that in three or four days I could open my door and cleanse and dry the den, and Asmodeus would come back and we could live peacefully until it was safe for me to hang around the ports and get out of the country. My hands were all right again, showing little deformity. The left eye was still queer, but the right was so foul, filmy, and bloodshot that the difference between them was no longer remarkable. A shave and haircut were all I needed, and then I could pass anywhere as a criminal who had just celebrated his release from prison with a two-day binge.

After nightfall I heard some activity in the lane, and sat with my ear to the ventilator. I couldn’t translate the noises. There were two men, but they did not speak to each other. I expect they whispered, but owing to the curve of the little tunnel I could not hear so slight a sound. Something heavy was being moved, and once I heard a thud against the door. My thoughts played with the idea of a man-trap, a log perhaps that would fall on my head; they were certainly building something in the runway I had once used. Since I used it no longer I felt very clever and secure. I told myself that I was disappointed, merely disappointed, for they would wait another week or two for the result of their trap and I should have to stay underground.

All the time, as I now see, I was conscious of extreme terror and my heart was beating as if I had been running for my life. Only by an effort did I stop myself talking aloud. I am very clever, I was saying to myself over and over again. They’ll find themselves run in for murder, I said, if they catch somebody else. And then the terror came up in my throat, for there was silence in the lane and little bits of earth were falling down my bolt hole into the inner chamber.

I lay between the two dens, watching the trickle of earth and listening to the quick strokes of a chopper. A man, as I thought, jumped or fell into the hole, and a wave of rubble rolled down to the bottom. I reached for my knife, and waited. He’s at my mercy, I said, I can make what terms I like. I was obsessed with the idea of talking, not killing. A reasonable man, I told myself. He’ll see sense. He plays chess.

There was no further sound, none at all. The man had stuck in the hole or died. I crept up the slope of foul earth and lay on my back, poking an ash-pole up the chimney as far as the twist. It didn’t meet the body I expected; it met a hard obstruction. I withdrew myself as far as I could, for fear of some trap or explosive, and poked harder. The thing felt solid with a smooth under surface. I lit a candle and examined it. It was the sawn end of a tree trunk which had been jammed into my hole.

I crawled to the door and pushed against it; nothing moved. Then I felt a sense of panic with which was mingled relief that the end had come at last. I intended to rush out and let them shoot. A quick death, merited. I took the axe that had hollowed out the sandstone and drove it between the planks of the door. It turned. I ripped off the planks. On the far side of them was an iron plate. It rang hollow except in the centre. They had jammed it in place with a baulk of timber, the other end of which rested against the opposite bank of the lane.

I don’t know what happened to me then. When I heard Quive-Smith’s voice I was lying on the bag with my head on my arms, pretending to myself that I was thinking things out. I was controlled, but my ears were drumming and my skin oozing cold sweat. I suppose that if one sits on hysteria long enough and hard enough, one loses consciousness. Something has to give way, and if the mind won’t, the body must.

Quive-Smith was saying:

‘Can you hear me?’

I pulled myself together and sloshed a handful of water over my head. There was no point in keeping silence; he must have heard me battering on the iron. The only thing to do was to answer him and play for time.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I can hear you.’

‘Are you badly wounded?’

Damn him for asking that question then! I should have found it very useful later if I could have persuaded them that I was suffering from a neglected wound and incapable. As it was, I answered the truth:

‘Nothing much. You hit a whisky flask with a leather jacket behind it.’

He muttered something that I could not hear. He was speaking with his mouth close to the ventilation hole. If he jerked his head, the voice was lost.

I asked him how he had found me. He explained that he had gone straight from the barn to the lane on the off chance that I had been responsible for the broken roof and that he might see me returning to my mysterious hiding-place.

‘Simple,’ he said, ‘so simple that I was very much afraid that it was what you meant me to do.’

I told him that I had never attempted to kill him, that I could have done it a dozen times if I had wished.

‘I suppose so,’ he replied. ‘But I counted on you leaving me alone. You would only have exchanged me for the police, and it was obviously wiser to persuade me that you had gone. You did, as a matter of fact.’

His voice had a weary harshness. He must have been in fear of his life all the time that he was at the farm. A braver man and a cleverer than I am, but without—I was going to write ethics. But God knows what right I have to claim any! I have neither cruelty nor ambition, I think; but that is the only difference between Quive-Smith and myself.

‘Couldn’t you give me a cleaner death than this?’ I asked.

‘My dear fellow, I don’t want you to die at all,’ he said, ‘not now. I am so glad you had the sense not to break out while I was sealing you up. This position has taken me by surprise as well as you. I can’t promise you anything, but your death seems wholly unnecessary.’

‘The only alternative is the zoo,’ I answered.

He laughed at this for a nervous, uncontrollable moment. Lord, he must have been relieved to know where I was!

‘Nothing so drastic,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid you wouldn’t survive in captivity. No, if they take my advice, I shall be ordered to return you to your position and friends.’

‘On what condition?’

‘Trifling—but we needn’t go into that yet. Now, how are you off for food?’

‘Reasonably well, thank you.’

‘No little delicacies I can bring you from the farm?’

I nearly lost my temper at this. The man’s voice had just the right touch of concern; there was but the tiniest shade of irony to tell me that he was thoroughly enjoying his own acting. He would have brought me anything I asked, I have no doubt. For the cat-and-mouse act to be subtle enough to please his taste, it had to be hardly distinguishable from genuine kindness.

‘I think not,’ I answered.