the slanderer’s death.  He must, in fact, have been within a few hundred yards of the place at the time the murder was committed, for he had gone back to Falmer Park that day, with the message that Mr. Taynton would call on the morrow, and had left the place not half an hour before the breaking of the storm.  He had driven by the corner of the Park, where the path over the downs left the main road and within a few hundred yards of him at that moment, had been, dead or alive, the man who had so vilely slandered him.  Supposing—­it might so easily have happened—­they had met on the road.  What would he have done?  Would he have been able to pass him and not wreaked his rage on him?  He hardly dared to think of that.  But, life and love were his, and that which might have been was soon dreamlike in comparison of these.  Indeed, that dreadful dream which he had had the night after the murder had been committed was no less real than it.  The past was all of this texture, and mistlike, it was evaporated in the beams of the day that was his.

Now Brighton is a populous place, and a sunny one, and many people lounge there in the sun all day.  But for the next three or four days a few of these loungers lounged somewhat systematically.  One lounged in Sussex Square, another lounged in Montpellier Road, one or two others who apparently enjoyed this fresh air but did not care about the town itself, usually went to the station after breakfast, and spent the day in rambling agreeably about the downs.  They also frequented the pleasant little village of Falmer, gossiping freely with its rural inhabitants.  Often footmen or gardeners from the Park came down to the village, and acquaintances were easily ripened in the ale-house.  Otherwise there was not much incident in the village; sometimes a motor drove by, and one, after an illegally fast progress along the road, very often turned in at the park gates.  But no prosecution followed; it was clear they were not agents of the police.  Mr. Figgis, also, frequently came out from Brighton, and went strolling about too, very slowly and sadly.  He often wandered in the little copses that bordered the path over the downs to Brighton, especially near the place where it joined the main road a few hundred yards below Falmer station.  Then came a morning when neither he nor any of the other chance visitors to Falmer were seen there any more.  But the evening before Mr. Figgis carried back with him to the train a long thin package wrapped in brown paper.  But on the morning when these strangers were seen no more at Falmer, it appeared that they had not entirely left the neighbourhood, for instead of one only being in the neighbourhood of Sussex Square, there were three of them there.

Morris had ordered the motor to be round that morning at eleven, and it had been at the door some few minutes before he appeared.  Martin had driven it round from the stables, but he was in a suit of tweed; it seemed that he was not going with it.  Then the front door opened, and Morris appeared as usual in a violent hurry.  One of the strangers was on the pavement close to the house door, looking with interest at the car.  But his interest in the car ceased when the boy appeared.  And from the railings of the square garden opposite another stranger crossed the road, and from the left behind the car came a third.