He collected the rug and basket and they walked together to the car, the voice of the creek growing fainter as they drew away from it. The sun was near the edge of the warm hill and soon their little gully would slip into the shade of afternoon. Carolyn paused and looked back.

“It is a lovely place,” she said. “In spite of everything I shall think of it with pleasure. The painfulness of all this does not seem to have touched it at all.”

“No,” said Alleyn, “it is very remote. We were interlopers but vaguely welcome, don’t you think?”

“Yes. It is a friendly place, really.”

“Are you very tired?”

“I believe I am.”

“No sleep last night?”

“No.”

They got into the car which smelt of hot leather and petrol, and bumped over the rough up to the road.

On the way home they were both silent, Alleyn thinking to himself: “I really believe her. I believe her story. I believe she feels just what she said—a kind of friendliness for me, no more. Was she quite unaware that she attracted me so vividly for those few moments, or was she using her charm deliberately? Is she in love with Hambledon? Probably.”

With an effort he screwed his thoughts round to the case. If this story about Bob was true, and if Bob turned out to be an intelligent fellow, they should be able to check movements of the actors with much more accuracy than Alleyn had thought possible. As soon as he got back, he would look again at his plan of the theatre. He was practically certain that the passage was the only source of exit from the dressing-rooms to the stage, therefore anyone of the company who went from the dressing-rooms to the ladder, would have to go past Bob as he stood in the narrow entry. If Bob could only tell him exactly how long he had stood there!

They passed the musterer, riding a half-clipped, raky-looking horse at a lope along the rough grass at the roadside. The three panting sheep-dogs ran in the shade of the horse. The man again solemnly wagged his head at them and raised a hand as they passed. The folding hills marched about. A party of Maoris, grouped on a ramshackle veranda, grinned and waved. They overtook several cars and met several more. The settlements grew closer together, and at length they came over the brow of the last hill, and looked across the flat to Middleton.

“Last lap,” said Alleyn, breaking a long silence.

Carolyn did not answer. He turned to look at her. Her head was bent down and, as heavily as a mandarin’s, nodded with the motion of the car. She was sound asleep. At the next bend she swayed towards him. With an equivocal grimace he raised his left hand and tipped her head against his shoulder. She did not wake until the car drew up outside the hotel.