“Of course, I may be all at sea in what I fancy. At the same I _may_
be right, and it’s worth having a try for. Now, we’ll take for granted
that Mr. Moor did go down Beaver street toward Sharpley’s house. Of
course, he wouldn’t go out aimlessly into the night; he had some place
already fixed in his mind where to hide his clothes, and he went
straight to that place with as few steps aside as possible. Now, it
would seem at first as though he had thought of some place to hide his
clothes near Sharpley’s house or the blacksmith shop opposite; but two
reasons stand in the way of this. In the first place, his mind would be
in too much confusion to think deliberately of any cunning plan. If he
had waited until the next day, it might have been different. I think he
had a place fixed in his mind when he came home; he certainly doesn’t
seem to have spent much time in laying plans. In the second place, he
was gone half an hour. It wouldn’t have taken him five minutes to walk
to Sharpley’s and back, and I don’t believe he would tarry anywhere in
the dark after he had hidden his clothes. Beside all this, he told the
servant girl that he would _be back inside of an hour_. He told her
this at the moment of meeting her, and it isn’t likely that he would
have said it if he hadn’t a longish distance in his mind at the time.
He would have to walk along the street while he was in town, for he
wouldn’t go cutting across people’s gardens and climbing fences. So he
wouldn’t leave the sidewalk till he had come to Sharpley’s house or
the blacksmith shop, which are the last houses before you come to open
lots. As soon as he was out of town, he would strike a straight line
for the place that he had in his mind—and now, let’s see how far he
went.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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