Stone cast up his eyes. For a moment he stared and went pinker. Then he spoke in the same tangled tone.
"So now," he said, "now I'm a Judas, am I? That's fine. That's just dandy. I hereby take a solemn oath that never again, never if I live to be a billion, will I ever put out a helping hand to anybody again. I'll kick 'em in the face! I'll kill 'em! I'll Listen, you lunkheads, why didn't you wait and let me explain?" He put out a hand and seized the inspector by the shoulder, as though to steady himself. "You poor, blithering, blistering….. Listen. The fellow wasn't at the station to arrest you. He never heard of you in his life. He wasn't coming to our compartment to grab you. He was at the train to meet me. He's my son-in-law, you one-horned limbs of a piebald cow, the son-in-law I've been talking about all evening and the one I said could probably help you! But would you listen? No. And now, as far as I'm concerned you can take your envelopes and your Keppels and your Hogenauers, and you can I make a pause here, remembering that scene in the prosaic hotel-room with the ‘Deer Drinking by Moonlight’ on the wall. It marked the change. It marked the crossing of the Jordan and the parting of the roads. It did not mean peace, for there was no peace in this case until the end of it; but at least it meant the end of our flying career as fugitives from justice. Though I was not certain of this at the moment, I know that I had seldom felt such a sense of relief.
Evelyn spoke in a small voice. "Does that mean," she said, "that-er"
"Take it easy," growled Stone. "What kind of a jam have you got into now?"
Murchison glanced at the clerk, and rattled coins in his pocket. "Anything wrong?" he asked casually.
Stone's son-in-law, in essentials, was a sort of older and Anglicized version of Stone himself. Also, there was about him something which reminded me of our friend Humphrey Masters. He was about thirty-five, heavy in the body, square in the jaw, and with light-blue eyes under wrinkled lids, which gave him an older look. When he took off his bowler bat, which is the Force's way of indicating that there is a truce from duty, he showed wiry brown hair standing up like a brush. He had two furrows round the sides of his mouth, and a slow easy way of talking, which again was like Masters. He stood tapping his fingers on his hat, looking almost absently at the clerk; and I guessed that Stone had told him the whole story.
"Anything wrong," he repeated, "Mr.-'
"Robinson," said the other. He appeared somewhat dazed, and acutely conscious of the revolver in his band. The atmosphere of the room did not now go with it. "I should rather think," he went on slowly, "there was a whole lot wrong. I've caught two members of the Willoughby gang."
"Nonsense," said Murchison.
Murchison was grinning broadly, with an indulgent air. The clerk stared from one to the other of us.