"I shall get over this very shortly," she told him. "In the meantime, I warn you by your own code that I'm rather jealous of Jenny. Against that, I am trying to do the decent thing and what's right What I really came here to tell you.."
"Yes?"
"I can tell you, because it hasn't directly to do with Jen herself. Years ago," said Ruth, "a child was found murdered and mutilated at a place called Priory Hill, not very far from here." Then she was gone.
The old brick prison might have echoed with ghostly occupants shaking their cell-doors. Was Hessler, who also murdered and mutilated, listening with his ear to the little grille of the iron door? Across and beyond the paper bales Martin could see the tops of high windows, with vertical bars; but the lighter sky beyond made darkness here more dense.
Ruth… he must forget that subject, Martin told himself. Suppose Jenny had seen them? No harm in it, only natural; but hard to explain. Lord, suppose Ruth told Jenny? I’m rather jealous of Jenny." Stop! Mentally he closed the lid of the incident with a bang.
Still not a whisper, not a chink of light, from beyond the iron door. Under the rules of the test, the man inside was permitted to get up and walk about Could anything have happened to Stannard?
Martin would have shouted to Stannard, except for the practical certainty that it would bring the barrister to the iron door, sardonically to inquire whether his friend outside needed help.
Yes, Ruth — carefully did right to respect Stannard. Aside from anything else, the Great Defender was- as clever as Satan. Another memory stirred in Martin's head: a festal occasion at his club, viewed through a gauze of whisky, in which a certain eminent judge had spoken with great indiscretion. He spoke of Stannard, who had been briefed for the defence in the Cosens murder case.
"Gentlemen," His Lordship had declared, his speech being rendered here as free from alcoholic slur, "gentlemen, counsel for the defence produced an unexpected alibi. It was not only, gentlemen, that we couldn't prove the flaw in it; we couldn't even see the flaw in it. And that thus-and-so Cosens, as guilty as Judas, walked out a free man."
Well, there was no question of all…