“I think you will work all the better for a short holiday,” he said; “and I am sure you are sensible enough to keep out of any trouble.”

He walked to the door, and stood for a moment with his hand on the knob.  “I will send you up the clothes and some paper and ink,” he added.  “Then you can get up or write in bed—­just as you like.”

After three years of granite quarrying—­broken only by a short spell of sewing mailsacks—­the thought of getting back to a more congenial form of work was a decidedly pleasant one.  During the half-hour that elapsed before Sonia came up with my things, I lay in bed, busily pondering over various points in connection with my approaching task.  I had often done the same in the long solitary hours in my cell, and worked out innumerable figures and details in connection with it on my prison slate.  Most of them, however, I had only retained vaguely in my head, for it is one of the intelligent rules of our cheerful convict system to allow no prisoner to make permanent notes of anything that might be of possible service to him after his release.

There seemed, therefore, every prospect that I should be fully occupied for some time to come.  Indeed, it was not until I had dressed myself in Savaroff’s clothes (they fitted me excellently) and sat down at the table with a pen and a pile of foolscap in front of me, that I realized what a lengthy task I had taken on.

All my rough notes—­those invaluable notes and calculations that I had spent eighteen months over—­were packed away in my safe at the Victoria Street office.  I had not bothered about them at the time, for when you are being tried for your life other matters are apt to assume a certain degree of unimportance.  Besides, although I had told George of their existence, I knew very well that, being jotted down in a private cypher, no one except myself would be able to make head or tail of what they were about.

Still they would naturally have been of immense help to me now if I could have got hold of them.  Clear as the main details were in my mind, I saw I should have to go over a good bit of old ground before I could make out the exact list of my requirements which McMurtrie needed.

All that afternoon and the whole of the following day I stuck steadily to my task.  I had little to interrupt me, for with the exception of Sonia who brought me up my meals, and the old deaf-and-dumb housekeeper who came to do my room about midday, I saw or heard nobody.  McMurtrie did not appear again, and Savaroff, as I knew, was away in London.

I took an hour off in the evening for the purpose of studying the Daily Mail, which proved to be quite as entertaining as the previous issue.  There were two and a half columns about me altogether, the first consisting of a powerful if slightly inaccurate description of how I had stolen the bicycle, and the remainder dealing with various features of my crime and my escape.  It was headed: