A company of three men ride, in broad
daylight, through England from Gloucestershire to Deal. Behind one of
them sits a wounded, _and hatless_, and handcuffed captive, his
pockets bulging with money. Nobody suspects anything, no one calls the
attention of a magistrate to this extraordinary _demarche_! It is too
absurd!
The story told by Harrison is conspicuously and childishly false. At
every baiting place, at every inn, these weird riders must have been
challenged. If Harrison told truth, he must have named the ship and
skipper that brought him to Dover.
Dismissing Harrison's myth, we ask, what could account for his
disappearance? He certainly walked, on the evening of August 16, to
within about half a mile of his house. He would not have done that had
he been bent on a senile amour involving his absence from home, and
had that scheme of pleasure been in his mind, he would have provided
himself with money. Again, a fit of 'ambulatory somnambulism,' and the
emergence of a split or secondary personality with forgetfulness of
his real name and address, is not likely to have seized on him at that
very moment and place.
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