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mere threat; he was anxious to prevent Brotherhood doing anything before he could have a talk with him. By the way, Brotherhood was at home the weekend before his death, contrary to his usual custom. Mrs. Bramston does not abide our question, otherwise we might have elicited the fact from her. Davenant travelled up in the same train with him, and saw him beginning Momerie's Immortality⁠—that was on the Monday morning; he bought a copy himself at the bookstall and sent the cipher to him, thinking he would probably be still reading the same book the next day. The whole idea of the cipher, he says, was a mere foolish whim on his part.

He now found himself in urgent need of plans. He did not know whether his victim was dead: yet it would be risky to go right down into the valley, and perhaps find that a corpse had already been discovered. He determined to go and hide until he got more news about this. Meanwhile, the fog prevented him from seeing whether he had made a clean job of it. He searched a little, and found Brotherhood's hat a little way down the slope; that meant that he had not fallen sheer⁠—he might have left his stick behind too as he fell. This, however, Davenant could not see in the fog. He took the hat to the point at which the viaduct railing began, and a little further, secure that this, at any rate, would fall clear. He then measured a few yards back, and dropped a golf-ball to mark the spot. He thought, you see, that he might want