The morning after Deede Dawson had paid his visit to the attic there
was news, however, that disturbed him greatly, for Mrs. Barker, the
charwoman who came each morning to Bittermeads, told them that two
men in the village--notorious poachers--had been arrested by the
police on a charge of being concerned in Mr. Clive's death.
The news was a great shock to Dunn, for, knowing as he thought he
did, that the police were working on an entirely wrong idea, he had
not supposed they would ever find themselves able to make any arrest.
As a matter of fact, these arrests they had made were the result of
desperation on the part of the police, who unable to discover
anything and entirely absorbed by their preconceived idea that the
crime was the work of poachers, had arrested men they knew were
poachers in the vague hope of somehow discovering something or of
somehow getting hold of some useful clue.
But that Dunn did not know, and feared unlucky chance or undesigned
coincidence must have appeared to suggest the guilt of the men and
that they were really in actual danger of trial and conviction. He
had, too, received that morning, through the secret means of
communication he kept open with an agent in London, conclusive proof
that at the moment of Clive's death Deede Dawson was in town on
business that seemed obscure enough, but none the less in town,
and therefore undoubtedly innocent of the actual perpetration of
the murder.
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