The A.P.M. issued his orders.  He gave instructions that my depot should be rung up, and he bade Wilson remove me to what he called the guard-room.  He sat down at his desk, and busied himself with a mass of buff dockets.

In desperation I renewed my appeal.  ’I implore you to telephone to Mr Macgillivray at Scotland Yard.  It’s a matter of life and death, Sir.  You’re taking a very big responsibility if you don’t.’

I had hopelessly offended his brittle dignity.  ’Any more of your insolence and I’ll have you put in irons.  I’ll attend to you soon enough for your comfort.  Get out of this till I send for you.’

As I looked at his foolish, irritable face I realized that I was fairly UP against it.  Short of assault and battery on everybody I was bound to submit.  I saluted respectfully and was marched away.

The hours I spent in that bare anteroom are like a nightmare in my recollection.  A sergeant was busy at a desk with more buff dockets and an orderly waited on a stool by a telephone.  I looked at my watch and observed that it was one o’clock.  Soon the slamming of a door announced that the A.P.M. had gone to lunch.  I tried conversation with the fat sergeant, but he very soon shut me up.  So I sat hunched up on the wooden form and chewed the cud of my vexation.

I thought with bitterness of the satisfaction which had filled me in the morning.  I had fancied myself the devil of a fine fellow, and I had been no more than a mountebank.  The adventures of the past days seemed merely childish.  I had been telling lies and cutting capers over half Britain, thinking I was playing a deep game, and I had only been behaving like a schoolboy.  On such occasions a man is rarely just to himself, and the intensity of my self-abasement would have satisfied my worst enemy.  It didn’t console me that the futility of it all was not my blame.  I was looking for excuses.  It was the facts that cried out against me, and on the facts I had been an idiotic failure.

For of course Ivery had played with me, played with me since the first day at Biggleswick.  He had applauded my speeches and flattered me, and advised me to go to the Clyde, laughing at me all the time.  Gresson, too, had known.  Now I saw it all.  He had tried to drown me between Colonsay and Mull.  It was Gresson who had set the police on me in Morvern.  The bagman Linklater had been one of Gresson’s creatures.  The only meagre consolation was that the gang had thought me dangerous enough to attempt to murder me, and that they knew nothing about my doings in Skye.  Of that I was positive.  They had marked me down, but for several days I had slipped clean out of their ken.

As I went over all the incidents, I asked if everything was yet lost.  I had failed to hoodwink Ivery, but I had found out his post office, and if he only believed I hadn’t recognized him for the miscreant of the Black Stone he would go on in his old ways and play into Blenkiron’s hands.  Yes, but I had seen him in undress, so to speak, and he knew that I had so seen him.  The only thing now was to collar him before he left the country, for there was ample evidence to hang him on.  The law must stretch out its long arm and collect him and Gresson and the Portuguese Jew, try them by court martial, and put them decently underground.