“Mr. Morris Assheton?” said the first.

“Well, what then?” asked Morris.

The two others moved a little nearer.

“I arrest you in the King’s name,” said the first.

Morris was putting on a light coat as he came across the pavement.  One arm was in, the other out.  He stopped dead; and the bright colour of his face slowly faded, leaving a sort of ashen gray behind.  His mouth suddenly went dry, and it was only at the third attempt to speak that words came.

“What for?” he said.

“For the murder of Godfrey Mills,” said the man.  “Here is the warrant.  I warn you that all you say—­”

Morris, whose lithe athletic frame had gone slack for the moment, stiffened himself up again.

“I am not going to say anything,” he said.  “Martin, drive to Mr. Taynton’s at once, and tell him that I am arrested.”

The other two now had closed round him.

“Oh, I’m not going to bolt,” he said.  “Please tell me where you are going to take me.”

“Police Court in Branksome Street,” said the first.

“Tell Mr. Taynton I am there,” said Morris to his man.

There was a cab at the corner of the square, and in answer to an almost imperceptible nod from one of the men, it moved up to the house.  The square was otherwise nearly empty, and Morris looked round as the cab drew nearer.  Upstairs in the house he had just left, was his mother who was coming out to Falmer this evening to dine; above illimitable blue stretched from horizon to horizon, behind was the free fresh sea.  Birds chirped in the bushes and lilac was in flower.  Everything had its liberty.

Then a new instinct seized him, and though a moment before he had given his word that he was not meditating escape, liberty called to him.  Everything else was free.  He rushed forward, striking right and left with his arms, then tripped on the edge of the paving stones and fell.  He was instantly seized, and next moment was in the cab, and fetters of steel, though he could not remember their having been placed there, were on his wrists.

CHAPTER X

It was a fortnight later, a hot July morning, and an unusual animation reigned in the staid and leisurely streets of Lewes.  For the Assizes opened that day, and it was known that the first case to be tried was the murder of which all Brighton and a large part of England had been talking so much since Morris Assheton had been committed for trial.  At the hearing in the police-court there was not very much evidence brought forward, but there had been sufficient to make it necessary that he should stand his trial.  It was known, for instance, that he had some very serious reason for anger and resentment against his victim; those who had seen him that day remembered him as being utterly unlike himself; he was known to have been at Falmer Park that afternoon about six,