"And hadn't we better find out whether anything more is known at Clankwood?" suggested Twiddel. "Dr Congleton wrote a month ago; perhaps they have caught him by this time."
"Hardly likely, I'm afraid; he'd have written to you if they had. Still, we can but ask."
"But, I say!" the doctor suddenly exclaimed, "people may find out that I'm back without him."
"You must leave again at once," he said decisively, rising from the table; "and there's no good wasting time, either."
"What do you mean?" asked the bewildered doctor, who had not yet assimilated the criminal point of view.
"We'll put our luggage straight on to a cab, drive off to other rooms--I know a cheap place that will do--and if by any chance inquiries are made, people must be told that you are still abroad. Nobody must hear of your coming home to-night."
"Is £500, not to speak of two reputations, worth it! Come on!"
The unfortunate doctor sighed, and rose too. He was beginning to think that the nefarious acquisition of fees might have drawbacks after all.
The chronicle must now go back a few days and follow another up-express.
"I must either be a clergyman or a policeman," Mr Bunker reflected, in the corner of his carriage; "they seem to me to be on the whole the two least molested professions. Each certainly has a livery which, if its occupier is ordinarily judicious, ought to serve as a certificate of sanity. To me all policemen are precisely alike, but I daresay they know them apart in the force, and as all the beats and crossings are presumably taken already, I might excite suspicion by my mere superfluity. Besides, a theatrical costumier's uniform would possibly lack some ridiculous but essential detail."
He lit another cigar and looked humorously out of the window.
"I shall take orders. An amateur theatrical clergyman's costume will be more comfortable, and probably less erroneous. They allow them some latitude, I believe; and I don't suppose there are any visible ordination scars whose absence would give me away. I shall certainly study the first reverend brother I meet to see."
Thus wisely ruminating, he arrived in London at a very early hour on a chilly morning, and drove straight to a small hotel near King's Cross, where the landlord was much gratified at receiving so respectable a guest as the Rev. Alexander Butler. ("I must begin with a B." said Mr Bunker to himself; "I think it's lucky.")