Chapter 25Mr. Campion dozed. The night had gone on, it seemed, for ever. The wooden armchair in which he lay had been designed by a man with definite but erroneous ideas concerning the human form, and he was peculiarly uncomfortable.
It was four o’clock in a scented country dawn, with a world astir in the fields and a light, exciting wind shivering through the leaves.
In the room in which he sat, on the iron mantelshelf below the fly-blown tariff of licenses obtainable from His Majesty’s revenue officers, a round tin clock ticked with a shudder a second.
From the local superintendent’s office next door came sounds that had gone on all through the night: voices and footsteps, slow country intonations and the brisk, clipped abbreviations of the town, chair legs scraping on wood and solid
