Some of these horses were sure to be out in the fields, and it would
be easy for him, wasting no time in explanation, to catch one of them,
mount bare-backed and ride through the New Plantation--the New
Plantation was a hundred years old, but still kept that name--over
the brow of the hill beyond, swim the canal in the valley, and so
straight across-country to Ramsdon.
Riding thus direct he would save time and distance, and arrive more
quickly than by going the necessary distance to secure a motor-car
which would have also to take a much more circuitous route.
He jumped the hedge, therefore, that lay at the wood's edge and
slid down the steep bank into the sunken road beyond where he found
himself standing in front of Walter, who held in his hands a gun
levelled straight at Rupert's heart.
"I could have shot you time after time in there you know," he said
quietly. "From behind that bush and from out of the bracken, too.
I don't know why I didn't. I suppose it wasn't worth while, now
I shall never be Lord Chobham."
He flung down his gun as he spoke and sprang on a bicycle that he
had held leaning against his legs.
Quickly he sped away, leaving Rupert standing staring after him,
realizing that his life had hung upon the bending of Walter's finger,
and that Walter, with at least two cold-blooded murders to his
account, or little more to hope for in this world or the next, had
now inexplicably spared him for whose destruction, of life and honour
alike, he had a little before been laying such elaborate, hellish
plans.
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