The Professor’s dinner was served punctually at seven, and by eight o’clock he was well on the road of which the landlord had told him, and which his map showed him led in the direction of the railway. A short distance beyond the village he found a narrow lane, which, after a few twists and turnings, brought him out upon the track. There was a narrow path beside it, and along this he stepped out, anxious to reach his destination while it was still broad daylight.
The track followed a devious path across the heath, which, viewed from near at hand, was more undulating than at first appeared. The track had been built to avoid the steeper gradients, but every now and then it ran upon a low embankment or through a shallow cutting. On either side the heath spread out, silent and mysterious, sometimes bare and sandy, with twisted pine trees standing above it at intervals, sometimes covered with low, dense thickets, in which the general silence seemed to be accentuated. When the line rose slightly to cross one of the lesser eminences, the Professor caught a fleeting glimpse of still water, the wandering arm of some unfrequented lagoon among the islands of the harbour. Behind him the sun hung low over the long range of the Purbeck hills, which changed from green and gold to blue and purple as the sun sank ever lower. Against them, the sharp outlines of the ruined Castle stood out clear cut like a beacon.
As the Professor strode on through the silence, devoid of any vestige of human habitation, he noticed how admirably adapted was this barren heath to purposes of concealment. Spread over its surface were a series of shallow depressions, shaped like a saucer, and sometimes holding an abandoned gravel pit, now half filled with stagnant water after the winter rains. A man might lie concealed in one of these, secure from observation, for as long as he could keep himself supplied with food. There would be no risk of discovery, those whose business led them to cross the heath kept strictly to the narrow paths, barely a foot wide, which meandered at wide intervals through the close growth of heather. A living man, so long as he avoided observation from these paths, might lie hidden for as long as he chose. And if a living man, why not a dead body? How easy to drag the damning evidence of crime into one of those dark thickets, to sink it into the silent depths of one of those black, unruffled pools!
The Professor shuddered, and increased his pace. This lonely heath was no place in which to indulge in morbid thoughts. His life might be in danger, but somehow he felt that it was not here that the blow would fall. If his theory were correct, if he had gauged aright the psychology of his adversary, it would not be thus that he would meet his death, here where there was none to witness the blow. Despite the almost threatening aspect of the country, deepening in tone every instant as the sun sank lower behind the distant hills, there was no vestige of any real danger. The shadows that lurked amid the gorse and heather were but the shadows of his own fears.
So the Professor reasoned with himself. It would have been folly for him, wishing as he did to avoid any suspicion of his interest in Dr. Morlandson, to approach the scene of his death during the day. The very track by the side of which he was walking contained a potential risk of discovery. It must be used sometimes, the rails showed signs that wagons had passed over them not so very long ago. They led only to a pier, or rather jetty, upon which the contents of the wagons were unloaded into a waiting barge. The pier was utterly unfrequented except by these barges. The track, in fact, was a dead end as far as any casual wayfarer was concerned. There could be no rational excuse for following it.
He topped a slight rise, and saw in the distance the white surface of the clay-pit which was to be his guide. From where he stood, he could see a considerable distance on either side of him. There was no sign of life upon the heath, except that far away, perhaps a couple of miles, the outlines of a cottage stood out against the grey background.
The Professor reached the clay-pit, and searched the undulating surface of the heath for some sign of the remains of Dr. Morlandson’s laboratory. For some moments he failed to find it, and then, at last, he made out the jagged tooth of a broken wall thrust upwards from behind a clump of gorse bushes. This, no doubt, must be his goal. There was no path leading to it from the track, but the Professor, using his stick to feel the way, stepped out boldly across the heather, which yielded like a cushion to his footsteps.
The distance from the track to the ruin must have been six or seven hundred yards. It took the Professor some little time to cover it, since he was obliged to make several detours in order to avoid clumps of gorse. But he reached it at last, and stood on the edge of what had once been a clearing, surveying the scene that lay before him.
The cottage itself had completely vanished. All that remained of it was a mound thickly overgrown with weeds and coarse grass, from which protruded here and there fragments of charred beams and rafters. The encroaching heath had hidden any signs of any garden there might once have been, and it was impossible for the Professor to form any idea of what the place had looked like while it was still standing. But
