John looked out across the river and thought. Then he said in a faraway voice:

“I said I’d taken it out to pick up wood⁠—and lost it. Overboard⁠ ⁠… I had to say something.”

“Hell!” Stephen hoped that this exclamation had an authentic note of perplexity and distress. He was conscious of neither, only of a singular clearness and contentment.

“Well, what are we going to do now?”

There was no answer.

“Margery’s very bad this morning,” he went on, with seeming irrelevance. “We’re very worried. The doctor⁠ ⁠…”

John interrupted suddenly, “What can we do? What will the police do next? Will they come and see me?” He had a sudden appalling vision of himself in a stammering, degrading interview with a detective.