"All that you really know of this matter," asked Mr. Millington-Bywater,
"is that you chanced to turn up Lonsdale Passage, saw a man lying on the
pavement and a ring close by, and that, being literally starving and
desperate, you snatched up that ring and ran away as fast as you could?"
"Yes--that is all," asserted Hyde. "Except that I had met a man, as I
have already told you, at the end of the passage by which I entered."
"You did not even know whether this man lying on the pavement was
alive or dead?"
"I thought he might be drunk," replied Hyde. "But after I had snatched up
the ring I never thought at all until I had run some distance. I was
afraid of being followed."
"Now why were you afraid of being followed?"
"I was famishing!" answered Hyde. "I knew I could get something, some
money, on that ring, in the morning, and I wanted to stick to it. I was
afraid that the man whom I met as I ran out of the passage, whom I now
know to have been Mr. Viner, might follow me and make me give up the
ring. And the ring meant food."
Mr. Millington-Bywater let this answer sink into the prevalent atmosphere
and suddenly turned to another matter.
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