Bredon made no great pace up the river; he was exhausted by his twenty-five minutes of variety performance at the lock, and there was, besides, no need for haste. If the unknown took his punt downstream at all⁠—Leyland, in any other contingency, would be able to keep close on his tracks⁠—he must needs reach Millington Bridge before he could get a lodging for the night or a high road to bring him back into touch with civilization. And it would be easy work for Bredon to reach Millington first, in his lighter craft. Actually when the bridge stood up before him, dark-outlined against a cream and silver horizon of late sunset, he saw a figure leaning over the parapet towards him, and was hailed in Leyland’s voice: “Tie up the canoe at the raft, and join me up here. I’m on the lookout.”

Millington Bridge is not among those one-way-traffic concerns in which our thrifty forefathers delighted; there is room to pass a lorry on it; but, by a kind of false analogy, it has a sharp angle over each of its jutting piers in which the pedestrian may take refuge from the dangers and the mud-splashings of the road. It is easy to lean over the parapet at these points, not nearly so easy to stop doing it; the leisurely flow of the stream beneath laughs at the scruples which would forbid you to spend another five minutes in doing nothing⁠ ⁠… another ten minutes⁠ ⁠… another quarter of an hour, so as to make it a round number by the clock. To Leyland, and to Bredon, who now joined him, no such scruples even presented themselves. The stranger, it appeared, was taking a quite easy course down the river; and Leyland had had no difficulty in outwalking him. In a few more minutes he was due; meanwhile, there was nothing to be done but watch the stream below them and talk over their immediate plans.

It was one of those evenings when the clouds that have ushered out the setting sun find relief (you would say) after the formalities of that majestic exit by chasing one another and playing leapfrog across the clear expanse of sky. The sky itself had passed from fiery gold to a silver gilt that faded into silver; and now the massed cloudscape that had hung, in islands and capes and continents, with bays and lagoons of fire between them, across the Western horizon, broke up into grotesque shapes which breasted the sky southwards⁠—a lizard, a plane-tree upside-down, a watering-can, an old man waving a tankard. They moved along in procession, like the droll pantomime targets of the shooting-range at a country fair, cooling off as they did so from crimson to deep purple, from purple to slate-blue. The river, in the fading light, had lost something of its companionableness, but had taken on an austerer charm; the patches of light on it were less dazzling but more solemn, the shadows had less of contrast but more of depth. A silence had fallen on Nature which made you instinctively talk in a low voice, as if the fairies were abroad. The willow-thicket that nestled under the extreme right arch of the bridge, below which they were standing, stirred, and whispered with the first presage of a breeze.

“He can’t be long now,” said Leyland. “When he comes round the corner we can walk away slowly towards the canoe⁠—he’ll hardly recognize us. What I’m afraid of is that he may want to stop the night here; in that case I shall have to stop here, and you, if you don’t mind, ought to go back and hold Nigel’s hand for a bit. Do you mind making a land journey of it? I’d rather keep the canoe.”

“Not a bit. Good evening for a walk. But I bet he doesn’t stop here. He’s still time to get through Shipcote Lock, and it’s all the better for him if he can do it in the half-light.”

“D’you mean he suspects that he’s being trailed?”

“At least he must know that he’s walking into danger.”

“I dare say you’re right. Hang it all, why doesn’t he come? If he goes straight on, we must follow at a safe distance in the canoe.”

“What about the lock? It’ll give him a good lead if Burgess has to fill up and let out again before we can get through.”

“I’ve thought of that. You and I are going to drag over the weir. That puts us ahead, of course; at the end of the weir-stream, where it joins the lock-stream, we’ll go across on to the Byworth bank, and lie up in those bushes till he comes past. We can leave the canoe moored to the bank; he won’t find anything suspicious about it. We still follow, and then, of course, we can’t exactly tell what he’ll do.”

“No. I take it, though, that he has no reason for knowing that Inspector Leyland of the C.I.D. has his headquarters at the Gudgeon Inn, Eaton Bridge.”

“None that I know of. Perhaps fortunately for us. Confound it all, what on earth is he waiting for?”

They stood there perhaps five minutes longer, and then, beyond the furthest fringe of the willows to their left, a punt-pole, rising and dropping rhythmically, betrayed the stranger’s approach. The watchers turned, with a single motion, and walked slowly to the end of the bridge; before the flashing pole was out of sight downstream they too had embarked, and were paddling noiselessly in its wake.

It was the simplest piece of shadowing-work conceivable. They had only to hug the shore and keep a good lookout at the turns; for the rest, they were content to follow the conspicuous white flash ahead of them, while they were concealed by every tuft of rushes, every stretch of overhanging bank. At any moment, with their superior mobility, they could have made a spurt and overhauled the fugitive. They had no wish and no need to overhaul him; it was enough to shepherd him along in the direction of Eaton Bridge; there, surely, or close by, he would be bound to spend the night⁠—it would be too late for him to demand the opening of another lock. Was a hunt ever so effortless and so noiseless? They felt almost disappointed that the course was not longer, so easy was the game, so safe the quarry. The shadows fell thicker as they went, the sky’s colour died from silver to dark blue; lights came out in the rare farmsteads, and the cattle in the fields showed only as indistinct blotches of grey.

The negotiation of the lock at Shipcote needed more care. They had to wait till the stranger was well inside the lock, and even until the water itself had begun to subside, before they could reach the weir unobserved. But fortunately Mr. Burgess was no hustler, especially in his mood of evening repose; meanwhile, the dragging of the canoe over short grass and thistles was an easy task, and a spurt down the weir-stream felt almost a relief after their dawdling progress. Long before the punt had come in sight they had reached the end of the island, crossed the reunited stream, moored the canoe, and contrived to lie up in a willow-patch only a few yards away from it. They waited a little in silence, and then heard the dull ripple before the punt’s bows, the intermittent scrape of the pole against its side.

The stranger, however, when he came in sight of the moored canoe, did not seem so incurious about it as Leyland had anticipated. He stood for a moment or two with his pole poised, clearly irresolute, perhaps even (in some mysterious way) alarmed. He looked round him furtively; then, with a quick outward thrust, brought his punt close in to the mooring-place. Leyland and Bredon were both puzzled and disconcerted by the gesture. To betray their presence would be inopportune, and, to tell the truth, somewhat ridiculous; meanwhile, it hardly seemed probable that the stranger, whatever interest he took in the boat’s presence, would be at the pains of towing it off with him. But they had forgotten one possibility. With a quick motion, still looking nervously around him, the man caught up the two paddles that lay idle in the canoe, deposited them in his own boat, and with one vigorous shove started out again downstream.

A canoe without paddles is almost as helpless as a dismasted ship. You may improvise substitute instruments, but they will not carry you far or fast. What had been only a breath at Millington Bridge had now developed into a stiff breeze, and there was no hope, even, of crossing the river and making use of a practicable towpath. To go back to Shipcote Lock in search of a paddle would waste precious time; the loan of Mr. Burgess’ bicycle would have been a more happy solution, but Bredon had unfortunately punctured it in riding back along the field path from the station. All these considerations occurred to the minds of the marooned couple, and were rapidly discussed in terms which it would be an affectation to print. Bredon suggested that he might try swimming to the opposite bank with the canoe in tow; but the wind had set in from the east, and they agreed that the attempt would be time-taking, if not actually hopeless. In fact, there was nothing for it but to follow along their own bank, trusting to luck that they would be able to make a forced march through the fields.

It was a hope which flattered them with fair prospects, and then plunged them into embarrassments. At first only the resistance of the standing hay about their trouser-legs threatened them with discomfort. But soon the hay gave place to bracken, rougher in its impact and more clinging in its embraces; in the gathering darkness, they stumbled into holes and hidden runlets, or squelched painfully through patches of bog. Then came barbed-wire fences, and willow-fringed brooks with a treacherous carpet of reeds; hedges that delayed you in a search for a stile, painful barriers of burdock and thistle. All journeys seem long in the dark; the familiar distance between Shipcote and Eaton Bridge had lengthened itself out into a nightmare. Their feet were wet and slippery from the bogs they had blundered into, pricked by a hundred thorns and hayseeds; a mass of uncomfortable details, ridiculous in themselves, insignificant if you had had to face them in the daylight and at your leisure, made a martyrdom of their benighted journey. Fatigue and nerve-strain conjured up disquieting pictures which lodged obstinately in the imagination⁠—the stranger leaving his punt at Eaton Bridge and motoring back to Oxford; the stranger pulling over the rollers at the next lock unobserved; the stranger slinking into the Gudgeon and holding nefarious confabulations with Nigel, his presumed accomplice. When they reached the disused boathouse, they mistook its outline for the Gudgeon; when they reached the Gudgeon, they were already wondering why the day had not begun to break.

All this time, naturally, they caught no glimpse of the punt. They did not even pass any belated river-goers who might have had news of its progress. They came back to the Gudgeon angry, defeated, with no clear idea in their minds except the sheer necessity of sitting down and having a meal.

“You poor dears!” cried Angela as they came in. “Supper’s on the table, and has been for some time. I’ve felt dreadfully like the deserted wife in the comic papers, sitting up for hubby with the poker. I told them to light a fire, by the way. Come right inside.”

No, nobody had passed in a punt that she knew of. No, it was not closing time yet; in fact, there were still a few people about in the bar. “I may say that I bought a whole bottle of whisky, in case you should be too late. They looked at me with considerable amazement. Nigel’s asleep upstairs; the doctor says he can get up a bit tomorrow. Don’t attempt to tell me what you’ve been doing till you’ve had your supper.” They were, indeed, hardly fit for the strain of conversation, and Angela almost immediately seized upon the excuse of “tucking up the baby” to leave them in the enjoyment of a bachelor tête-à-tête. It was only as he looked down at the bottom of his second pint that Leyland asked, “Well, and what next? I shall curse myself all my life for not remembering to take the paddles out of that canoe.”

“Confound it all, though, how on earth could we expect him to know that he was being shadowed, and that the canoe had got ahead of him? That’s what I can’t get over. If he’s any sense, realizing that he was being followed and not wanting to be caught, he’ll have left the punt somewhere close to the bridge, and legged it for Oxford by road. Probably he was in time to catch the late bus, which would mean getting to Oxford at a respectable hour. If you feel up to it, of course, we might take the car to Oxford and see if we can track him through the bus people. It’s almost incredible that he should have had the effrontery to go on by river.”

A door opened somewhere in the passage, and for a moment they heard, from the bar, the voices of agriculturists raised in high debate⁠—heard, from the kitchen, the inevitable drone of wireless. The door shut again, and there were uncertain steps in the passage, as of a man hesitating which way he should turn. Then Angela was heard asking, “Did you want anybody?” and an unknown voice replied, “I was wondering if I could see Inspector Leyland. I’m sorry to bother him at such a time of night, but it’s really rather important. My name’s Farris (would you tell him?), Edward Farris.”

It was not likely that the bearer of such a name would be kept waiting. Angela looked in, raised her eyebrows, and held the door open for the newcomer. Four eyes, still blinking after a long trudge in the darkness, turned towards it, and saw, unmistakable on the threshold, the figure of the stranger in the punt.