"Babba's wrong," said Ashley. "He came on Sunday night. The notes are to bribe him to go away again."
There was a pause; then Bowdon said slowly:
"I should like to hear a bit more about this, if you don't mind, Ashley. The money's yours. I promised it. But still—since you've begun, you know!"
"Yes, I know," said Ashley quickly. "Look here, I'll tell you all about it."
The hands ticked the best part of the way round the clock while Ashley talked without pause and uninterrupted, save once when the notes were brought in and laid on the table. He told how the man had come, what the man was, how Ora had fled from him, and how, while the man moved about in the room above, he himself had told her that the man had not come. He broke off here for an instant to say, "You can understand how I came to tell her that?" On receiving Bowdon's assenting nod he went on to describe how for two days he had kept his prisoner quiet; but now he must take some step. "I must take him to her, or I must murder him, or I must bribe him," he ended, with the laugh that accompanies what is an exaggeration in sound but in reality not beyond truth.
"I don't like it," said Bowdon at the end.
"You haven't seen him as I have," was Ashley's quick retort. To him it seemed all sufficient.
"Used to beat her, did he?" Bowdon was instinctively bolstering up the case. Ashley hesitated a little in his answer.
"She said he struck her once. I'm bound to say he doesn't seem violent. Drink, I suppose. And she—well, it might seem worse than it was. Why the devil are we to consider him? He's impossible anyhow."