“But——” she began.
“Come,” I repeated, more insistently, and she yielded, leaving the place as if she where walking in her sleep. But as soon as we were in the street and the gloomy gates had closed behind us, she paused to take two or three deep breaths, her face raised skywards and her eyes shining brightly in rapture, and then smiled, as if the very air itself were at once the symbol and the proof of the liberty so unexpectedly regained.
After that she turned and held out her hand to me.
“You are out of prison, Pia, but you are not free,” I said, shaking my head. “I have answered for you; and you cannot return to your associates here without falsifying my pledge.”
Her eyes clouded in embarrassment. “What can I do?”
“In the first place you are going to put absolute confidence in your new gaoler and let him look after your future, as soon as he knows what you wish to do. He is a very stern gaoler and will take no refusals,” I added, interrupting a threatened protest.
“If you are anything like as famished as I am, your first desire will be to eat something;” and we turned into the first hotel we reached.
Some objection was taken to our appearance—we were like three towsled tramps—but money soon overcame that, and while I was doing what I could to get rid of the results of the night’s imprisonment—Pia having gone off with a servant for a similar purpose—I listened to Bryant’s account of his experience.
It was pretty much what I anticipated, but with an unexpected result. He had waited for me outside Inez’ house for some hours and had then contrived to send a message to Captain Bolton. Together they had agreed that the skipper should go and tell the police about my disappearance, while Bryant remained on watch.
But in some way the abduction plot had become known. The police had jumbled the two things up and, on reaching Inez’ house, their first act was to arrest Bryant himself on suspicion, refusing to believe or even listen to his explanation; and he had been in prison up to the moment of his being brought in to identify me.