"He knew how to use
the gloves and he was twenty years younger than I. However, there it is.
Backwards he went, all legs and arms and shrieks. And with him went the
papers he had stolen.--At twelve o'clock to-night, Robert, I must go
down after him."
"It's impossible, sir! It's a sheer precipice for four hundred feet!"
"Nothing of the sort," was the cool reply. "There are heaps of ledges
and little clumps of pines and yews. All that you will have to do is to
pull up the rope when I am ready. You can fasten it to a tree when I go
down."
"It's not worth it, sir," the man protested anxiously. "No one will
ever find the body down there."
"Send the boy home to stay with his parents to-night," Tallente
continued. "Your wife, I suppose, can be trusted?"
"She is living up at the garage, sir," Robert answered. "Besides, she
is deaf. I'll tell her that I am sleeping in the house to-night as you
are not very well. And forgive me, sir--her ladyship left a message.
She hoped you would lunch with her to-morrow."
Tallente strolled out again in a few minutes, curiously impatient of the
restraint of walls, and clambered up the precipitous field at the back
of the Manor.
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