"I know it by heart," said Cazalet. "It was that and nothing else that made me leave before the shearing."
"To meet me when I came out!" Scruton explained in a hoarse whisper. "To--to keep me from going straight to that man, as I'd told him I should in my first letter! But you can't hit these things off to the day or the week; he'd told me where to write to him on his voyage, and I wrote to Naples, but that letter did not get smuggled out. My warder friend had got the sack. I had to put what I'd got to say so that you could read it two ways. So I told you, Cazalet, I was going straight up the river for a row--and you can pronounce that two ways. And I said I hoped I shouldn't break a scull--but there's another way of spelling that, and it was the other way I meant!" He chuckled grimly. "I wanted you to lie low and let _me_ lie low if that happened. I wanted just one man in the world to know I'd done it. But that's how we came to miss each other, for you timed it to a tick, if you hadn't misread me about the river."
He drank again, stood straighter, and found a fuller voice.
"Yet I never meant to do it unless he made me, and at the back of my brain I never thought he would. I thought he'd do something for me, after all he'd done before! Shall I tell you what he did?"
"Got out his revolver!" cried Cazalet in a voice that was his own justification as well.
"Pretending it was going to be his check-book!" said Scruton through his teeth. "But I heard him trying to cock it inside his drawer. There was his special constable's truncheon hanging on the wall--silver mounted, for all the world to know how he'd stood up for law and order in the sight of men! I tell you it was a joy to feel the weight of that truncheon, and to see the hero of Trafalgar Square fumbling with a thing he didn't understand! I hit him as hard as God would let me--and the rest you know--except that I nearly did trip over the man who swore it was broad daylight at the time!"
He tottered to the folding-doors, and stood there a moment, pointing to Cazalet with a hand that twitched as terribly as his dreadful face.
"No--the rest you did--the rest you did to save what wasn't worth saving! But--I think--I'll hold out long enough to thank you--just a little!" He was gone with a gibbering smile.
