"I am inclined to believe you are right," he said. "At any rate, I shall go down to Lewes to-morrow and put it to the test. I would ask you to accompany me, but it would be a little irregular."
"I shall be content to learn the result," Colwyn answered.
CHAPTER XXIII
There are moments when the human brain refuses to receive communication from its peripheries, and the rapidity of thought becomes so slow that it can be measured by minutes. The stage of consciousness on which life's drama is solitarily played for every human being is too circumscribed to expand all at once for the reception of a strange and unexpected image. Such moments follow in, the wake of a great shock, like a black curtain descending on a lighted scene. When the curtain begins to rise again it is on a darkened stage, on which the objects are seen dimly at first, then clearer as returning intelligence, working slowly for the accommodation of the new setting, places the fresh impression in order with the throng of previously existing ideas.
Such a moment seemed to have come to Hazel Rath as she stood looking at Merrington, who sat in an easy chair on the other side of the table confronting her with the tangible perception of his massive presence, reinforced by the weight of an authority which, if not so perceptible, was sufficiently apparent in the stolid blue back of a policeman on duty outside the glass door, and in the barred windows of the little room to which she had been brought to receive the news which had just been conveyed to her. But she gave no sign of having heard, or, at least, understood the import of Merrington's relation. Her dark eyes wandered around the little office, and slowly returned to the face of the big man who was watching her so closely. Her look, which at first had been one of utter bewilderment, now revealed a trace of incredulity which suggested a returning power for the assimilation of ideas. But she did not speak.
"Have you nothing to say?" Merrington demanded. He had been a silent listener to many criminal confessions in his time, but in the unusual reversion of roles he was becoming unreasonably angry with the girl for not repaying his confidence with her own story.
His loud hectoring voice startled her, and seemed to accelerate the mechanism of her mind into the association of her surroundings with her position.
"Why did you bring me here to torture me?" she cried, with a sudden rush of shrill utterance which was, in its way, almost as pitiful and surprising as her previous silence. "Oh, why cannot you leave me alone?"
She threw her arms out wildly, then, as if realizing the futility of gesture, dropped them helplessly to her sides. There was something in the action which suggested a bird trying to stretch its wings in a cramped cage. Her quivering lips, tense facial muscles, and strained yet restless bearing plainly revealed an unbalanced temperament, bending beneath the weight of a burden too heavy and sustained. As an experienced police official, Merrington was well versed in the little signs which indicate the breaking point of imprisonment in those unused to it. He saw that Hazel Rath had reached a state in which kindness and consideration, but no other means, might induce her to tell all she knew.