Then, brooding over his wife’s confession—­the things she had merely hinted at as well as the things she had explicitly stated—­he remembered how in the beginning the wood near Long Ride was their meeting-place, how the man had met her there, and led her slowly beneath the trees to the cottage of the procuress.  And then an inspiration came.  A note to be sent in his wife’s name, as soon as Mr. Barradine got home to the Abbey.  “Meet me in the West Gate copse.  I want to show my gratitude”—­or—­“I want to thank you again”—­something of that sort.  “Meet me at the end of North Ride by the Heronry.  I will be there if possible four o’clock to-morrow.  If not there to-morrow, I will be there next day.  Mavis.”

He wrote such a letter, in a hand sufficiently like his wife’s.  Yes, that would fetch him.  The old devil would have no suspicions.

Then a cold shiver ran down his spine.  It was a thought rising from the depths, warning him, terrifying him.  The note would remain afterward.  If Mr. Barradine did not destroy it—­and very likely he would not do so—­the note would be found afterward.  But after what?

He tore up the note, tore it into tiny pieces.  It seemed to him that he had escaped from a danger.  His plan had been the idea of a madman.  But why?  With his skin still cold and clammy, he found himself whispering words which sounded explanatory, but which did not explain:  “Suppose a mistake occurred.  Yes, suppose a mistake occurred.”  Then trying to think quietly and sensibly, instead of in this fluttered, erratic way, he forced himself to interpret the real significance of the whisper.  Well, suppose he struck too hard, and too often.  But again there came the blankness—­an abrupt check to thought—­the depths refusing to give anything more to the surface.

He decided that he would go down to Hampshire secretly, letting no one know of his movements; and, stationing himself at some likely spot near the Abbey, he would wait till chance brought them face to face.  Yes, that would do.  Almost immediately he chose Hadleigh Wood as the place to hide in.  Instinct seemed to have suggested the wood rather than any point nearer to the Abbey, and instinct now ordered him to go there and nowhere else.  It was a likely road to so many parts; it was full of good hiding-places; and, although it was tricky, with its close thickets suddenly terminating on the edge of unexpected open spaces, he knew it all as well as the back of his right hand.  He could lie snug, or range about cautiously, seeing but unseen; and he would not have long to wait before the grand gentleman passed by on his way to or from the Abbey park.