ill-furnished, deserted-looking country house in a corner of South
Devon.

However it was no good worrying, for as far as I was concerned it was
painfully clear that there was no alternative. If I declined their
offer and refused to let McMurtrie carve my face about, they had only
to turn me out, and in a few hours I should probably be back in my
cell with the cheerful prospect of chains, a flogging, and six months'
semi-starvation in front of me.

Anything was better than that--even the wildest of plunges in the
dark. Indeed I am not at all sure that the mystery that surrounded
McMurtrie's offer did not lend it a certain charm in my eyes. My life
had been so infernally dull for the last three years that the prospect
of a little excitement, even of an unpleasant kind, was by no means
wholly disagreeable.

At least I had my week's "fun" in London to look forward to, and the
thought of that alone would have been quite enough to make me go
through with anything. I had lied to McMurtrie about my object,
but the falsehood, such as it was, did not sit very heavily on my
conscience. The precise meaning of "fun" is purely a matter of
opinion, and I was as much entitled to my definition as he was to his.
After all, if a convicted murderer can't be a little careless about
the exact truth, who the devil can?




CHAPTER VI