The girl turned a woebegone face towards him, her lower lip trembling pathetically. Anything more utterly helpless and appealing could hardly be imagined. “Then you’re—you’re going to leave me in the lurch, Mr. Mullins?” she asked, in a funny, shaky little voice.
Mr. Priestley squirmed. It appeared to him with sudden and unexpected force how remiss it was of him not to be a burglar. It was not playing the game. Here was this charming girl expecting to meet her burglar, never dreaming that she was doing anything else but meet her burglar; and there was Mr. Priestley going about the place not being a burglar at all. His conduct had been despicable, that was the only word for it—despicable!
Still, the fact remained that however contemptible it might be of him, he certainly was not a burglar. “I’m afraid I must,” he replied uneasily.
The girl had recourse to her handkerchief. “I think it’s most c-cruel of you,” she quavered. “After all, you can’t c-count my letters as b-burgling! I think you’re horrid. And after you p-promised, and I sent half your f-fee in advance.”
“My f-fee?” repeated the bewildered Mr. Priestley. “Your l-letters?”
“Yes. Oh, how can you be so unk-kind?”
That is just what Mr. Priestley was wondering. But he was wondering a large number of other things as well. In any case, he really had to find out more about this mysterious business first. “Look here,” he said desperately, while the train gathered speed, “will you tell me the whole thing from beginning to end as if I didn’t know anything about it at all? I—I’m afraid I must have been mixing you up with—with somebody else. I have—er—so many clients, you see.”
Bright hope was dawning in the face which the girl turned eagerly towards him. “And you’ll get my letters for me, after all?”
“I can’t make any promises,” returned Mr. Priestley cautiously, “but let me have the—er—the facts of the case first.”
With renewed animation the girl proceeded to give them to him, telling her story as much as possible between stations but not sparing her larynx even in the tunnels.