_Somehow_; but how? The poor little hoard which I had saved from my quarterly allowances lay locked up on Beechwood Hill in my box beneath my bed. By what conceivable means could I regain possession of it, unknown to Mrs Bowater?
Conscience muttered harsh words in my ear as I sat there holding that cold, limp hand with mine, while these inward schemings shuttled softly to and fro.
When my patient had fallen asleep, I got downstairs again--a more resolute, if not a better woman. Removing latch and box keys from their ribbon round my neck, I enclosed them in an envelope with a letter:--
"DEAR MR. ANON,--I want you, please, to help me. The large one of these two keys unlocks my little house door: the smaller one a box under my bed. Would you please let yourself in at Mrs Bowater's to-morrow evening when it's dark--there will be nobody there--take out Twenty Pounds which you will find in the box, and send them to _Miss Fanny Bowater, the Crown and Anchor Hotel, B----_. I will thank you when I come.
It is curious. Many a false, pandering word had sprung to my tongue when I was concocting this letter in my mind beside Mrs Bowater's bed, and even with Mrs Petrie's stubby, ink-corroded pen in my hand. Yet some last shred of honesty compelled me to be brief and frigid. I was simply determined to be utterly open with _him_, even though I seemed to myself like the dark picture of a man in a bog struggling to grope his way out. I dipped my fingers into a vase of wallflowers, wetted the gum, sealed down the envelope, and wrote on it this address: Mr ----, Lodging at a cottage near the Farm, North-west of Wanderslore, Beechwood, Kent. And I prayed heaven for its safe delivery.
For Fanny no words would come--nothing but a mere bare promise that I would help her as soon as I could--an idiot's message. The next three days were an almost insupportable solitude. From Mr Anon no answer could be expected, since in my haste I had forgotten to give him Mrs Petrie's address. I brooded in horror of what the failure of my letter to reach him might entail. I shared Fanny's damnation. Wherever I went, a silent Mr Crimble dogged my footsteps. Meanwhile, Mrs Bowater's newspaper, I discovered, lay concealed beneath her pillow.