At four o’clock Miss Farquharson, Mrs. Dick and Mrs. Sanders went down to the police barrack. They found Miss Blow seated by herself in the men’s day room. Constable Moriarty was digging potatoes in the garden at the back of the house. He had been questioned and cross-questioned by Miss Blow for more than an hour after he had completed the destruction of the bicycle tyre. He felt jaded and nervous. He stood on the brink of a frightful exposure. A trifling accident, an incautious word, might at any moment betray the part he had played in Constable Cole’s stratagem. Some men under the circumstances would have steadied themselves with whisky, but Moriarty was a strict teetotaller. Others would have smoked pipe after pipe of strong tobacco. Moriarty, much wiser, went out and dug potatoes. There is nothing more soothing to racked nerves than digging in the ground, and there is a mild excitement about driving a spade into potato ridges which distracts the mind from painful thoughts and terrifying anticipations. The turning up of the roots of any particular plant may display an amazing wealth of tubers, may expose to the gaze of the delighted gardener some potato of huge size or very unusual shape. You cannot tell beforehand what will be unearthed. Expectations and hope run high. There is also present a certain fear. It is always possible, unless you are very skilful at the work, that a spade may slice a potato, leaving you face to face with two reproachful, earth-soiled, flat surfaces, useless for the pot, a manifest disgrace to your digging. Moriarty was not a highly skilled or very experienced potato digger. He enjoyed to the full the pleasures of anticipation. He suffered from the bitterness which follows mistakes. He almost forgot Miss Blow and the torment of her questioning. Then, at a quarter past four, Miss Blow’s voice brought him back from his security. She called him by name from the back door of the barrack. Moriarty scraped the clay off the sides of his boots, shuffled on his coat, and gave his hands a rub on the front part of the legs of his trousers. Then he joined Miss Blow and the other ladies in the day room. “Why isn’t Sergeant Farrelly back?” asked Miss Blow. “I don’t know, miss.” “It’s after four,” said Miss Blow. “Well, now,” said Moriarty, “that’s a queer thing, so it is.” “He started, I am told, at about half-past twelve.” “It might have been that,” said Moriarty, “or it might have been more. I didn’t take notice on account of being engaged in mending your tyre at the time.” “It’s eight miles to Rosivera. Allow three-quarters of an hour to get there----” “It could be,” said Moriarty, “that he was punctured on the way. It’s a bad road.” “Allowing for all possible accidents, even supposing he walked the whole way there and back, they should be here by this time.” “They should. You’re right, there, miss. They should.”