Hartley was worried about the Padre, and he had warned the policeman to watch the Compound at night; but all the watching in the world did not explain the cause of these visits.  There was a connection somewhere and somehow between Heath and the missing Absalom, and Hartley wondered if he could venture to speak to Mrs. Wilder again about the night of the 29th of July, and implore her to let him know if she had seen Heath with Absalom.

It seemed, judging by what Atkins had heard, that Heath was paying for silence, and Hartley disliked the idea of working up evidence against the Padre.  The more he thought of it the less he liked it, and yet his duty and his sense of responsibility would not let him rest.  Mrs. Wilder had said that she had seen Heath and Absalom, and had then refused to say anything more, but Hartley saw in her reserve a suggestion of further knowledge that could not be ignored or denied.

Mhtoon Pah was quieter for the moment.  He believed that Leh Shin was being cautiously tracked, and the pointing image had held no further traces of bloodshed upon his yellow hands.  Hartley had grown to loathe the grinning figure, and to loathe the whole tedious, difficult tragedy of the lost boy.  If it had lain in the native quarter he could have found interest in the excitement of the chase, but if it ramified into the Cantonment, Hartley had no mind for it.  He was a man first, a sociable, kindly man, and, later, an officer of the law.

VIII

SHOWS HOW THE CLOAK OF DARKNESS OF ONE NIGHT HIDES MANY EMOTIONS, AND MRS. WILDER IS FRANKLY INQUISITIVE

Darkness brooded everywhere, but the gloom of night is a darkness that is impenetrable only to our eyes because we creatures of the hard glare of daylight cannot see in the strange clearness that brings out the stars.  Only in the houses of men real darkness has its habitation.  Under close roofs, confined within walls, shut into rooms, and lurking in corners:  there, darkness may be found, and because man made it, it has its own special terror, as have all the creatures of man’s hand.  Dark, menacing and noiseless, the shadows flock in as daylight wanes, filing up like heavy thoughts and sad thoughts, and casting a gloom with their coming that is not the blackness of earth’s restful night.

Mrs. Wilder paced her room with the steps of a woman whose heart drives sleep out with scorpion-whips of memory; and she went softly, for sound travels far at night, and Draycott Wilder, in the next room, was a light sleeper.  She was thinking steadily, and she was trying to force her will across the distance into the stronghold of Hartley’s inner consciousness.