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Updated: June 25, 2025
Indeed at another time he might have shrunk from the idea of sleeping each night in the very room where his friend had been foully done to death, but now he derived a certain grim satisfaction and a strengthening of his nerves for the task that lay before him. Only a very few visitors came to Bittermeads, especially now that Mr. John Clive, who had come often, was laid up.
It had seemed to him that so he might come to be accepted as one of them and perhaps learn in time the secret of their plans. The danger that they might adopt the other course of handing him over to the police had not seemed to him very great, for he had his reasons for believing that there would be no great desire to draw the attention of the authorities to Bittermeads for any reason whatever.
They crossed the road together and sat down on the common at an open spot, where none could well approach them unheard or unseen. Dunn laid his hand affectionately on Walter's shoulder as they settled themselves. "Old chap," he said. "It was good of you to come here. You've run some risk. It's none too safe near Bittermeads. But I'm glad to see you, Walter.
But though he remained for long hidden at a spot whence he could command the road to Bittermeads from Ramsdon Place, he saw nothing at all of Clive, and the sunny lazy morning was well advanced when he was startled by the sound of a gun shot some distance away.
The mare knew him, too, and suffered him to mount her without difficulty, and without a soul on the farm being aware of what was happening and without having to waste any precious time on explanations or declaring his identity, Rupert rode away, sitting the mare bare-backed, through the New Plantation towards Bittermeads, where he hoped, arriving unexpectedly, to be able to save Ella before the danger he was sure threatened her came to a head.
Then, stumblingly and heavily, Dunn turned an went away, and his eyes were very hard, his bearded face set like iron. Like a man in a dream, or one obsessed by some purpose before which all other things faded into nothingness, he went his way, the way Ella had taken in her flight through the wood, through the spinney to the public foot-path, and then out on the road that led to Bittermeads.
Dunn remembered now, too, that it was Walter who had discovered that first murderous attempt which had first put them on their guard, but perhaps he had discovered it only because he knew of it, and when it failed, saw his safest plan was to be foremost in tracking it out. And it was Walter who had last seen poor Charley Wright alone, and far from Bittermeads.
He knew Simmonds, the man Walter had promised to put on watch at Bittermeads, and knew him to be capable and trustworthy. None the less, his uneasiness grew and strengthened with every mile he traversed, till presently her situation seemed to him the one weak link in his careful plans.
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