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Paxton’s boy, and partly for reasons more immediately human, cursed himself heartily. It was essential that he should try to retrieve the situation as quickly as might be. And he must begin by sweeping his own mind clear of the penny-dreadful rubbish which – perhaps through the operation of some suggestive force from the teeming brain of Humphrey – had so unwontedly invaded it. Here – Mr Thewless in headlong downward scramble reluctantly asserted to himself – was a nervous boy who fancied things; who went in fear of all sorts of non-existent threats to his security. His confidence must be restored. These threats must be treated as the shadows they were.
    Thus did Mr Thewless march his thoughts to the top of the hill and march them down again – or rather (to put it frankly) did he give them licence, which they were abundantly to take advantage of quite soon, to scurry up and down as they pleased. At the moment, however, he had them more or less quietly stowed – permitting them, indeed, but one more mild foray. In other words, one final flicker of queer distrust he did at this moment allow himself. ‘Humphrey,’ he asked, ‘have you ever met any of these cousins we are going to stay with?’
    The boy shook his head. His gaze had gone blank and uncommunicative. ‘No,’ he said; ‘they’ve never set eyes on me.’ There was a long silence. Humphrey’s thumb stole towards his mouth. Then he checked himself and looked at his tutor steadily. With a movement as of abrupt decision he leant across the table. ‘Sir,’ he asked seriously, ‘have you ever been blackmailed?’
    Mr Thewless, because now determined at all costs to be sedative, smiled indulgently and leisurely filled his pipe. ‘No,’ he said; ‘nothing of that sort has ever happened to me.’
    ‘It has to me.’
    ‘Has it, Humphrey? You must tell me about it.’ Mr Thewless paused. ‘But when I was a boy I used to get a good deal of fun out of telling myself stories in which things like that happened. Only sometimes the stories got a bit out of hand and worried me.’
    ‘I see.’
    And Humphrey Paxton gave an odd sigh. Mr Thewless rose to return to their compartment. Once more something illusive and disturbing had invaded his consciousness. As he swayed down the corridor – following Humphrey and with the elderly lady behind him – he realized that it was the profound isolation of Hardy’s journeying boy.

 
     
5
    While Mr Thewless and his charge were moving unsteadily down the corridor of the 4.55 from Euston Detective-Inspector Thomas Cadover was crossing a broad London thoroughfare with the unconcern of a man once accustomed to controlling the traffic in such places with a pair of large white gloves. Nowadays his attire was pervasively sombre and his hair the only thing that was white about him: it had gone that way as the result of thirty years of fighting Metropolitan crime. During this long period he had seen many men come to the same job and not a few of these leave again – promoted, demoted, retired, or resigned. The fanatical Hudspith was gone and so was the wayward Appleby. But Cadover himself hung on, his hair a little thinner each year as well as whiter, his expression a little grimmer, his eyes sadder, his mouth compressed in an ever firmer line. He had seen tide upon tide of vice and lawlessness rise and lap round the city. Of low life and criminal practice he had seen whole new kinds sprout and flourish; he had seen criminology, answering these, transform itself and transform itself again. Sometimes he thought it about time he was giving over. Still, he was not giving over yet.
    He paused on the kerb and bought an evening paper. He turned to the stop press. West End Cinema Tragedy, he read. Scotland Yard Suspects Foul Play.
    Well, he was Scotland Yard – and the cinema was still a hundred yards off. Newspapers were wonderfully ahead with the news these days. He walked on and the Metrodrome rose before him. Across its