“Don’t be funny,” snapped the Colonel.
“I wasn’t,” replied Mr. Foster humbly, registering a mental memorandum that denying the authorship of notes he hadn’t written was considered humorous.
There was another little silence.
“Well,” said the Colonel, “got any reason why I shouldn’t have you clapped into jail, Foster, eh?”
Mr. Foster’s face brightened under its coal. Had he a chance after all?
“I—I didn’t know I was doing wrong,” he said eagerly. “She told me she meant to reform, you see. I wasn’t exactly sheltering her from the law: only from those scoundrels who were after her. I—I thought it right to do so. Of course,” added Mr. Foster virtuously, “I was going to inform the police when the danger was over, that is, in an hour or two. I—I know my duty as a citizen, I hope. Especially after she’d actually confessed to the murder. That’s what makes it so unfair, I think, arresting me too. If you’d only given me time you’d have heard from me all about it.” In his anxiety to escape the dock himself Mr. Foster had no compunction in pushing his recent visitor more securely inside it.
“What the blazes are you talking about?” demanded the Colonel blankly.
The Inspector drew out his notebook and looked official.
“The girl you found in my tool-shed,” said Mr. Foster, with some surprise. “I assure you there was no previous arrangement. I was as astonished when I saw her looking over my fence this morning as you would have been.”
The Colonel was no fool. He knew that cross-purposes had crept into the conversation somehow, and he was not going to give his own case away. “Tell me the whole story in your own words, from the very beginning,” he said curtly.