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THE VIADUCT MURDER

to go back there in better weather and look for the stick. Then he turned back along the line and took the path down to the dormy-house. The fog was beginning to lift, but he met nobody. He knew the secret passage from his boyhood, and thanked his stars that he had never mentioned its existence to anyone in the Club. He had a confederate, of course, among the Club servants⁠—Miss Rendall-Smith says she thinks it was an old servant of his family's; and this man, whose name has never appeared, helped him to hide in the passage and brought him, by arrangement with Sullivan, the necessities of living.

It was from our own conversation⁠—a singular thought!⁠—that he got most of his news. His confinement, by the way, was not very irksome, since he knew the habits of the members so well. He used to shave in the Club washing-room, for example; and got pickings from the food that went down to the kitchen. More than once, when he knew there was no danger of interruption, he came out into the billiard-room and played a game, right against left. He could keep in touch with all that went on, and it was his intention, I gather, to come out of his hiding-place in any case on the Saturday afternoon, play a round in the evening, and go back to the Hatcheries that night as if nothing had happened. That was, of course, when the verdict of suicide at the inquest made it seem as if he was free from all suspicion.

But our proceedings bothered him badly. Espe-