I was so knocked out of the usual run of things by this conversation with Crone that I went away forgetting the bits of stuff I had bought for Tom Dunlop’s rabbit-hutches and Tom himself, and, for that matter, Maisie as well; and, instead of going back to Dunlop’s, I turned down the riverside, thinking.  It was beyond me at that moment to get a clear understanding of the new situation.  I could not make out what Crone was at.  Clearly, he had strong suspicions that Sir Gilbert Carstairs had something to do with, or some knowledge of, the murder of Phillips, and he knew now that there were two of us to bear out each other’s testimony that Sir Gilbert was near the scene of the murder at the time it was committed.  Why, then, should he counsel waiting?  Why should not the two of us go to the police and tell what we knew?  What was it that Crone advised we should wait for?  Was something going on, some inquiry being made in the background of things, of which he knew and would not tell me?  And—­this, I think, was what was chiefly in my thoughts—­was Crone playing some game of his own and designing to use me as a puppet in it?  For there was a general atmosphere of subtlety and slyness about the man that forced itself upon me, young as I was; and the way he kept eyeing me as we talked made me feel that I had to do with one that would be hard to circumvent if it came to a matter of craftiness.  And at last, after a lot of thinking, as I walked about in the dusk, it struck me that Crone might be for taking a hand in the game of which I had heard, but had never seen played—­blackmail.

The more I thought over that idea, the more I felt certain of it.  His hints about Sir Gilbert’s money and his wealthy wife, his advice to wait until we knew more, all seemed to point to this—­that evidence might come out which would but require our joint testimony, Crone’s and mine, to make it complete.  If that were so, then, of course, Crone or I, or—­as he probably designed—­the two of us, would be in a position to go to Sir Gilbert Carstairs and tell him what we knew, and ask him how much he would give us to hold our tongues.  I saw all the theory of it at last, clear enough, and it was just what I would have expected of Abel Crone, knowing him even as little as I did.  Wait until we were sure—­and then strike!  That was his game.  And I was not going to have anything to do with it.

I went home to my bed resolved on that.  I had heard of blackmailing, and had a good notion of its wickedness—­and of its danger—­and I was not taking shares with Crone in any venture of that sort.  But there Crone was, an actual, concrete fact that I had got to deal with, and to come to some terms with, simply because he knew that I was in possession of knowledge which, to be sure, I ought to have communicated to the police at once.  And I was awake much during the night, thinking matters over, and by the time I rose in the morning I had come to a decision.  I would see Crone at once, and give him a sort of an ultimatum.  Let him come, there and then, with me to Mr. Murray, and let the two of us tell what we knew and be done with it:  if not, then I myself would go straight to Mr. Lindsey and tell him.