HE came towards him, and from the pallor of her face and her obvious distress he thought that she had discovered her brother's plans.
"May I see you, please?" she said breathlessly. "Alone. I want to talk."
He opened the door of his room, but she shook her head.
"No, I can't stay."
"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Has Mr. Meister come?"
"No. Why—is anything wrong? He told me a little time ago that he would call."
"Yes, something is very wrong. I made him very angry tonight.... Oh, I don't know what I'm saying!" She covered her eyes with her hands. He remembered that gesture of hers so well; he had seen it in the days she wore pinafores; the dog had died and she stopped at the cottage gates to tell him.
"Did you know he was coming here?"
She nodded.
"I was in his room when he phoned. I didn't intend going, but something took me there to ask him.... Have you seen my brother?"
"Yes; he was here a little time ago. I wonder you didn't meet him."
Her mouth was dry, her pulses were racing erratically. Acting on the impulse, she had first gone to the house. Atkins had seen her and let her in, and the interview which followed had been valueless. She had found Meister a being exalted, unsteady of foot and vinous of breath; he had grown out of his fear, and when she had begged him to let her off the promise she had made, he had been adamantine. And now, in a last desperate endeavour to save herself and her brother, she had come to tell Alan Wembury what she should have told him at first.
"I want you to advise me, Alan. You told me to come if I was in any difficulty, and I'm in a terrible difficulty. I don't know how to put it to you. Suppose—suppose that before Johnny went to prison he had done something even worse than burglary?"
Wembury was glancing uneasily at the door, but at her words he concentrated his gaze upon her.
"Won't you come into my room?" he begged.
She shook her head.
"No, I mustn't wait. Johnny will be coming home very soon. I want to see him before I—I go out. I'm working rather late to-night. Alan, suppose Johnny had done something dreadful in the past, could they punish him now? That is what I want to know. You understand what I mean—something he did before he was arrested and sent to prison?"
It was the last question in the world he expected from her, because he thought he knew Johnny Lenley's record rather well.
"It depends upon what the crime was," he said slowly. "You don't know?"
She shook her head.
"If it was serious—more serious than the charge on which he was convicted—they would try him again. But a case of that sort—years old—would take a lot of proving."
"But suppose there were proof?" she said desperately. "Documentary proof?"
He stared at her.
"Forgery?"
"No, no, no—I don't know. Oh, I oughtn't to be telling you this at all," she wailed, and he took her hand gently in his.
"You have told me nothing as yet. And if you do tell me anything that you'd rather I hadn't known, why, I'm a pretty good forgetter."
Sergeant Carter was pretending to be busy, and had an
excuse, for Dr. Lomond had followed the girl into the charge room and was searching for the fountain pen which, alternately with his glasses, he was always losing.
"They could punish him, then!" she asked anxiously.
"It depends. I shouldn't think that they would punish him, after his sentence and the way in which he earned remission."
He found it so hard even to offer this grain of comfort, knowing that yet another charge might soon be preferred against the man. The sight of her grief was agony to him, and her next words cut him even a little deeper.
"Oh, how awful!" she whispered. "And he's only just come back from prison! That year has changed him terribly, Alan! It is as if all the humanity had been drawn out of him, and something hard and solid had been put in its place."
"Won't you pretend that I'm not a police officer?" he asked in a low voice. "Give me just a little of your confidence, Mary. What is behind this story of an early crime?"
"I'll—I'll tell you," she said jerkily.