“I hear,” said Bartley Bradstone, leaning against the table and looking round the cell with a shudder. “I’ll do anything. I said I would when—when——”
“I agreed to take your crime upon my hands and suffer for you,” said Faradeane, grimly. “I have sent for you to tell you what you must do.”
He looked up almost eagerly.
“What is it?”
“You must leave England,” said Faradeane, slowly and deliberately, as if he were propounding a carefully considered scheme.
Bartley Bradstone’s eagerness increased.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “I—I’ve thought all along it would be better for me to get away. There’s no knowing what may turn up. This detective fellow from London, I don’t like the look of him,” and he covertly wiped the perspiration from his pallid forehead. “He might find out——”
“What can he find out?” asked Faradeane, sternly, and with a searching look. “What had this woman done to you that you should shoot her?”
“I didn’t mean to! I swear it!” exclaimed Bradstone, with a terrible oath. “I—I only meant to frighten her, and—and the cursed thing went off, and——”
He dashed his hands before his eyes and shuddered.