His luggage there!—­where no one knew—­could have known, he was going!  The place he had selected, under what he had considered propitious circumstances, as a haven, a refuge; where he might find himself for a brief period comparatively safe, could he reach it, turn in, without being detected!  This last he believed he had successfully accomplished; and then to be told by the man—­All John Steele’s excuses for coming in this unceremonious fashion that he had planned to put to the servant of Captain Forsythe were at the moment forgotten.  Who could have guessed that he would make his way straight hither—­or had any one?  An enemy, divining a lurking place for which he was heading, would not have obligingly forwarded his belongings.  What then?  Had Jocelyn Wray ordered them sent on with Captain Forsythe’s boxes and bags, in order that they might be less likely to fall into the hands of the police?

This line of reasoning seemed to lead into most unwonted channels; it was not probable she would concern herself so much further about a common fugitive.  The cut and bruised fingers of the man before the fireplace linked and unlinked; an indefinable feeling of new dangers he had not calculated on assailed him.  Suppose the police should have learned—­should elect to trace, those articles of his?  It was a contingency, a hazard to be considered; he knew that every possible effort would be made to find him; that if his antagonists were eager before, they would embark on the present quest with redoubled zeal.  He had been in their hands and had got away; disappointment would drive them more fiercely on to employ every expedient.  They might even now be at the gate; at the moment, however, he felt as if he hardly cared, only that he was very tired, too exhausted to move on.  His exertions of the last few days had been of no ordinary kind; his shoulder was stiff and it pained.

“Here you are, sir.”  The servant had entered and reentered, had set the table without the man in the arm-chair being conscious of his coming and going.  “Remembered my master inviting you once, when you were here, to pitch your camp at Rosemary Villa any time you should be after yearning for that quietood essential for literary composition and to windin’ up the campaign on your book.  So when I saw your luggage—­”

“Exactly.”  It was curious the man should have spoken thus, should have voiced one of the very subterfuges Steele had had in mind himself to utter, to show pretext for his too abrupt appearance.  But now—?

The situation was changed; yet he felt too exhausted to disavow the servant’s conclusion.  Certainly the episode of the luggage had made his task easier at this point; only, however, to enhance the greater hazards, as if fate were again laughing at him, offering him too much ease, too great comfort, seeking to allure him with a false estimate of his security.  As he ate, mechanically, but with the zest of one who had long fasted, he listened; again a vehicle went by; then another.