To shake, pull, and ransack the box till he had almost destroyed it was now his natural action.  But it contained absolutely nothing more.

‘Disappointed again,’ he said, flinging down the box, the bit of paper, and the withered twig that had lain with it.

Yet valueless as the new acquisition was, on second thoughts he considered that it would be worth while to make good the statement in his late note to Graye—­that he had sent everything the box contained except the sewing-thread.  Thereupon he enclosed the verse and myrtle-twig in another envelope, with a remark that he had overlooked them in his first search, and put it on the table for the next day’s post.

In his hurry and concentration upon the matter that occupied him, Springrove, on entering his lodging and obtaining a light, had not waited to pull down the blind or close the shutters.  Consequently all that he had done had been visible from the street.  But as on an average not one person a minute passed along the quiet pavement at this time of the evening, the discovery of the omission did not much concern his mind.

But the real state of the case was that a tall man had stood against the opposite wall and watched the whole of his proceeding.  When Edward came out and went to the Charing Cross post-office, the man followed him and saw him drop the letter into the box.  The stranger did not further trouble himself to follow Springrove back to his lodging again.

Manston now knew that there had been photographs of some kind in his wife’s workbox, and though he had not been near enough to see them, he guessed whose they were.  The least reflection told him to whom they had been sent.

He paused a minute under the portico of the post-office, looking at the two or three omnibuses stopping and starting in front of him.  Then he rushed along the Strand, through Holywell Street, and on to Old Boswell Court.  Kicking aside the shoeblacks who began to importune him as he passed under the colonnade, he turned up the narrow passage to the publishing-office of the Post-Office Directory.  He begged to be allowed to see the Directory of the south-west counties of England for a moment.

The shopman immediately handed down the volume from a shelf, and Manston retired with it to the window-bench.  He turned to the county, and then to the parish of Tolchurch.  At the end of the historical and topographical description of the village he read:—­

’Postmistress—­Mrs. Hurston.  Letters received at 6.3O A.M. by foot-post from Anglebury.’

Returning his thanks, he handed back the book and quitted the office, thence pursuing his way to an obscure coffee-house by the Strand, where he now partook of a light dinner.  But rest seemed impossible with him.  Some absorbing intention kept his body continually on the move.  He paid his bill, took his bag in his hand, and went out to idle about the streets and over the river till the time should have arrived at which the night-mail left the Waterloo Station, by which train he intended to return homeward.