“Then I should have thought it would have been a comparatively easy matter to get such information from them as would enable you to have broken up the Yellow Gang,” argued Mr. Collyer shrewdly.
Todmarsh shook his head.
“One would think so on the face of it. But, as a matter of fact, not one of them has ever seen the Yellow Dog. His instructions have always reached them in some mysterious fashion and they have known nothing of the headquarters of the gang. We have never been able to get hold of anyone who knows anything of the inner workings.”
“Extraordinary!” said the rector. “Still, I can't believe that they took my emeralds. With regard to your Uncle Luke, it is a very different matter. What do you think?”
“I have not had time to think lately,” Aubrey Todmarsh said dully. “This terrible affair of Hopkins obsesses me, Uncle James. I cannot help thinking that I am responsible for the whole thing.”
The rector looked at him pityingly.
“I know you do, my dear Aubrey. But you have described this idea of yours rightly when you call it an obsession—you are not struggling against it as you ought. No. That is not quite what I mean—you can't struggle against an idea. What I mean is that you should try to realize, as your friends do, how very much you did for Hopkins, and how entirely blameless you are in the matter of his downfall.”
This was rather in the rector's best pulpit style, and the young head of the Community House of St. Philip moved his shoulders restlessly.
“You see we don't look at the matter from the same standpoint, Uncle James. I do not acknowledge that Hopkins has fallen.”
Mr. Collyer stared.