“I can’t understand him,” he said to himself. “Valley, I know, is a good man. Urquhart is a demon. But Jason baffles me. The Slowworm of Lenty! That’s about what he is. I had a feeling just now, when he stood with his eyes shut and his mouth gibbering, that he belonged to some primeval order of things, existing before good and evil appeared at all. But it’s clear that Urquhart’s cajoled him somehow. And yet I don’t know! I’m tempted to think he’d be a match even for him⁠—very much in the way some cold wet rain from the aboriginal chaos would discomfort the Devil!”

He turned from the shopwindow and moved on. Soon he came to where two crossroads branched off from the one he followed, the road to the right leading up Babylon Hill, the road to the left leading to that portion of the town where Christie’s house was. Should he turn to the left and return home that way? Or should he go straight on, past his father-in-law’s yard?