“Think better of it,” I urged. “Think better of it, and let us carry out our original plan and take him into the town.”
“It was never my original plan,” she answered, in the same low, monotonous tone. “Besides, to use your own words, we should never get him anything like as far. He’d be rescued or give us the slip long before. No. My original plan is the one I am going to carry out—Cross the road, Kuliso. That’s right. Keep straight on.”
“Beryl, you cannot do this thing yourself,” I urged earnestly. “We will manage to keep possession of him somehow, but—leave the rest to the hangman.”
“The hangman would never get him, in that case. The Government itself would find some pretext for letting him go, for fear of bringing on a war. Kenrick, you stood beside me when we found them—you, too, saw them. Have you so soon forgotten?”
“Forgotten? It would take more than a lifetime to forget that. Still, for your own sake do not do this. I believe you yourself will regret it afterwards. And then the law may call it murder. What then?”
“There isn’t a jury in the land that would convict me,” she said. “They would call it an act of justice. And it will be. I have thought it all out, you see.”
What was I to answer? She was very likely right in her surmise. I remembered Brian’s words, uttered the day after my arrival here—words to that very effect.
“Even then it will wear an ugly look,” I persisted. “We bring this man a considerable distance across country—the two of us—then shoot him in cold blood.”
“Has your blood cooled then, Kenrick?” she said. “Mine hasn’t, nor will it, until I see this murderer lying dead beside those he has killed.”
“Understand, I am not pleading for his life,” I went on, “only that you should not be his executioner. Besides, what if he is the wrong man? What if he should be speaking the truth after all when he says he knows nothing about it?”