“Yes?”

“Well, rather like this, you know, or even more so if anything.”  He rattled these words off in Mark’s rather monotonous, high-pitched voice, and then laughed, and added in his natural voice, “I say, that was really rather good.”

Antony nodded quickly.  “That was like it?” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Yes.”  He got up and squeezed Bill’s arm.  “Well just go and see about Cayley, and then we’ll get moving.  I shall be in the library.”

“Right.”

Bill nodded and walked off in the direction of the pond.  This was glorious fun; this was life.  The immediate programme could hardly be bettered.  First of all he was going to stalk Cayley.  There was a little copse above the level of the pond, and about a hundred yards away from it.  He would come into this from the back, creep cautiously through it, taking care that no twigs cracked, and then, drawing himself on his stomach to the edge, peer down upon the scene below him.  People were always doing that sort of thing in books, and he had been filled with a hopeless envy of them; well, now he was actually going to do it himself.  What fun!

And then, when he had got back unobserved to the house and reported to Antony, they were going to explore the secret passage!  Again, what fun!  Unfortunately there seemed to be no chance of buried treasure, but there might be buried clues.  Even if you found nothing, you couldn’t get away from the fact that a secret passage was a secret passage, and anything might happen in it.  But even that wasn’t the end of this exciting day.  They were going to watch the pond that night; they were going to watch Cayley under the moonlight, watch him as he threw into the silence of the pond what?  The revolver?  Well, anyhow, they were going to watch him.  What fun!

To Antony, who was older and who realized into what deep waters they were getting, it did not seem fun.  But it was amazingly interesting.  He saw so much, and yet somehow it was all out of focus.  It was like looking at an opal, and discovering with every movement of it some new colour, some new gleam of light reflected, and yet never really seeing the opal as a whole.  He was too near it, or too far away; he strained his eyes and he relaxed his eyes; it was no good.  His brain could not get hold of it.

But there were moments when he almost had it .... and then turned away from it.  He had seen more of life than Bill, but he had never seen murder before, and this which was in his mind now, and to which he was afraid to listen, was not just the hot-blooded killing which any man may come to if he lose control.  It was something much more horrible.  Too horrible to be true.  Then let him look again for the truth.  He looked again but it was all out of focus.

“I will not look again,” he said aloud, as he began to walk towards the house.  “Not yet, anyway.”  He would go on collecting facts and impressions.  Perhaps the one fact would come along, by itself which would make everything clear.