He came towards her and rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. “You poor child,” he said, and there was genuine sympathy in his tone. “If I were your elder brother, my dear girl, I should give you the same advice that I’m offering you now. Get this off your mind. Tell me everything.”
“You can lock me up,” she said, faintly. “It will make no difference.”
“But,” he urged, “do you know who this man is that you are trying to protect, this notorious crook, this—”
She looked at him, eyes wide open in amazement. He stopped abruptly.
“I am not trying to shield any notorious criminal,” she declared.
“You may not know it, but Larry Hughes is one of the most dangerous men in London.”
She looked him straight in the eyes now. “That is the man you mentioned yesterday. When I said I did not know him I was confused. I have met him twice, or perhaps three times. He is no friend of mine—merely an acquaintance.”
“He is the man who engineered the burglary. He is not worth an ache of your little finger.”
“It is all so dreadfully mixed up,” she exclaimed. “You must believe me, Mr. Labar, I hardly know him.”
He saw that it was scarcely worth pushing the harassed girl further for the time, and bit his lips as he tried to consider the next move. His duty, which he had seen clearly before this interview, was no less plain now. The girl should be held if only on her own admission that she was an accessory in the crime. But somehow he could not bring himself to issue the order. He tried unsuccessfully to tell himself that he was a fool to let himself be hypnotised by her. It was no use.
“Well, if you won’t talk, you won’t,” he said with a shade of gruffness in his tone. “That will do for now, Miss Noelson. I don’t profess to understand you.”
“You mean—I can go?” she asked, hesitatingly.
“You can go,” he agreed.
She held out a slim hand. “I want to thank you,” she said simply.
“Better go now,” he said, “before I change my mind.”
He held the door open for her and stood for a while in thought watching her as she descended the stairs. Another door opened, and a man casually followed her. The mechanics of investigation have to be obeyed, and Labar had no intention of calling off her shadow.
He returned to his desk, and picked up a document. But his agility of mind had deserted him. He saw nothing but a pair of grey eyes—eyes plaintive, protesting, pleading. For ten minutes he sat thus, lost to the world. A sharp, imperative knock at the door, followed by the swift entrance of one of his men, recalled him to himself.
“I’m sorry, sir,” gasped the intruder, “Miss Noelson, Miss Noelson—”
Labar was at his side and shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Don’t stand there stammering, you fool. What’s happened to Miss Noelson?”
“She’s gone, sir. Just outside Streetly House it was. A gentleman stopped to speak to her. I was thirty yards away. They walked a few paces. Suddenly he lifted her into a big car that was standing at the kerb. She shouted, but before I could reach them they were gone. That’s all, sir.”
“You lump of mud. You condemned camel. What else did you do besides gaping after them like a codfish? Did you get the car number? What was the man like?”
Labar shook the man feverishly. The other pulled himself away unresentfully. “It was a big Rolls, number K9362. The man was of medium size, very well dressed in a light-grey suit—”
“Larry Hughes, by thunder!” ejaculated Labar.
VII
The incidence of crime among fifty million people affects the average individual very seldom. Any ordinary man who has his pocket picked or the domestic silver stolen, has the feeling that he has been unfairly selected as the victim of a phenomenon. Why should such a singular misfortune happen to him?
So it was with Penelope Noelson. A very much worried person was that girl as she left the precincts of the Grape Street police station. She felt a sense of injustice that she should have become caught in a coil from which she saw no way of extricating herself. If only things would work out so that she would not be involved. A selfish attitude no doubt, but one which she would have been something more than human to avoid.
Quite illogically, there was a touch of exasperation in her mind with Labar. She had felt grateful to him as she left the station, but now she reflected that like many men he was blind in one eye. How dare he assume that her silence was due to an affection for Mr. Hughes? Why, he had even hinted that—that—. She flushed hotly at the implication that she realised might have lain behind his guarded words. For Penelope, although a modern and sophisticated maiden, had a quite sufficient self-respect.
She had to carry on the fight alone. There was no one, neither relation nor intimate friend, to whom she might turn for counsel or sympathy. And beyond it all lay the shadow of the gaol. If there had only been something she could do, some active step that she might take, it would have been easier. She thought of flight. That would, however, be taken as an admission of guilt. Besides, she had little money, and her common sense told her that Labar had probably foreseen and guarded against that very contingency. Any attempt of that kind might very well be the signal for her arrest.
It was with her thoughts thus occupied that she did not observe
