“I must have seemed a brute to you,” he said. “I know now—I was perhaps able to guess a little even then—that you were shielding someone. I thought—God forgive me—that you might even be in love with Larry Hughes. I had found your photograph in his room, and like a mad fool I jumped to conclusions.”
“You weren’t,” she retorted with a faint pressure of his hand. “I can’t reproach you with anything. You had to do your duty and you acted like a chivalrous gentleman. My dear, I felt the meanest creature on earth when you would not lock me up. As for the photograph I haven’t the faintest doubt that he stole it, or perhaps he got it from Mrs. Gertstein. Now there are one or two things I want to ask you, if you will tell me.”
Against all the traditions of the Criminal Investigation Department, Harry Labar allowed himself to be pumped by this slip of a girl until she knew as much as he did of the progress of the case. She shuddered and drew closer to him as he told of the fight at “Maid’s Retreat,” and now and again she elucidated some point that still remained obscure.
“And now,” he said when he had finished his narration, “there still remains something in the way of cross-examination.”
“As long as you are not too ferocious,” she agreed. “What does my lord wish to know? I shall obey the court in every particular. Who is going to question me—the divisional detective inspector of Grape Street or Harry Labar?”
“The divisional detective inspector,” he retorted. “What I am anxious to know is what your attitude may be to Adèle Gertstein now? You have run big risks to protect her. Do you still think that she is worth it?”
She stiffened a fraction. “She was my friend,” she said.
“Is she still your friend?” he asked quietly. “You have said as little as possible even now about her—little that I do not know of my own knowledge. And things being as they are, Penelope, if she is still your friend there is only one thing that I can do.”
“That is?”
“To resign from the service, and find some other profession that will enable me to support a wife.”
Both had come to a halt and she now lifted her grey eyes to his. “I see,” she said. Then after a pause: “You mean that as a police officer you will have to go on and arrest her?”
“I mean more than that, my dear. I mean that I cannot suppress what I believe to be the important evidence of a vital witness.”
“However much I begged you?”
He put his arm about her. “I am not going to try to persuade you, Penelope, whatever I may think of your scruples. My resignation will go in the moment we get back to London.”
“Suppose,” she asked, softly, “suppose I told you that I felt freed from every obligation to this woman who was my friend? Suppose I told you that I had found her to be as treacherous as a snake, and that I would stamp on her as readily as I would upon a snake? What would you say then?”
“I should say that Donna Quixote Penelope had some very good reason. But honestly, dear, I don’t want to put you in the witness box unless you wish.”
She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. “Thank you. I hate the thought. Still if I am to be a detective’s wife I don’t want to begin by crossing my husband-to-be. But it will be difficult for me.”
“I know that. Trust me as far as you can.”
“That is all the way,” she replied. “But if Adèle even at the last had acted in a different way, I might still have hesitated. After all, she is a woman you cannot judge by ordinary standards. She is an impulsive, self-willed child.”
Labar checked the interruption that there were many criminals like that, and the girl went on.
“When she came with Hughes to this place I felt sorry for her, until I knew that she had tried to kill you. I felt sorry for her but relieved to think that I had someone with me to whom I might talk freely. But she was mad with panic. When I suggested that she might give herself up she would not hear of it. She had some wild idea of escaping to South America.”
“With Larry Hughes?”
“I suppose so. Well, it was decided that we should sleep in the same room. That evening when we were alone together she used every artifice and argument that was possible to persuade me to agree to marry him. I haven’t the faintest doubt that some of the reasons she tried to urge on me were supplied by Hughes himself. She would not have thought of them by herself. The more I resisted the more vehement she became. She pointed out how much I owed to her and her husband. It was the only chance of safety she had. If I did not marry him, he would most likely abandon her to the chances of the law. If I had the faintest shred of gratitude or friendship for her I ought to do this thing. Why should I hesitate to help her? He was a wealthy man. You can probably imagine the kind of persuasion that she would use.”
“I can,” said Labar, grimly. “Go on.”
“She lost all control over herself at last. She swore like a fishwife, and ended by taking an oath that if I did not agree she would accuse me of being her confederate in the forgery of her husband’s cheque, and the person who attempted to kill you near Grape Street police station. No one would believe,
