I waited in the deep heather till I saw the smoke
of an east-going train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny
booking-office and took a ticket for Dumfries.
The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his
dog--a wall-eyed brute that I mistrusted. The man was asleep, and
on the cushions beside him was that morning's SCOTSMAN. Eagerly I
seized on it, for I fancied it would tell me something.
There were two columns about the Portland Place Murder, as it
was called. My man Paddock had given the alarm and had the milkman
arrested. Poor devil, it looked as if the latter had earned his
sovereign hardly; but for me he had been cheap at the price, for he
seemed to have occupied the police for the better part of the day. In
the latest news I found a further instalment of the story. The milkman
had been released, I read, and the true criminal, about whose identity
the police were reticent, was believed to have got away from London
by one of the northern lines. There was a short note about me as the
owner of the flat. I guessed the police had stuck that in, as a clumsy
contrivance to persuade me that I was unsuspected.
There was nothing else in the paper, nothing about foreign
politics or Karolides, or the things that had interested Scudder. I
laid it down, and found that we were approaching the station at
which I had got out yesterday.
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