That resolve was not weakened by successive encounters, first with a policeman near the entrance gates, next with a trespasser whom Langholm rightly took for another policeman in plain clothes, and finally with the Woodgates on their way from the house. The good couple welcomed him with a warmth beyond his merits.
"Oh, what a blessing you have come!" cried Morna, whose kind eyes discovered a tell-tale moisture. "Do please go up and convince Mrs. Steel that you can't be rearrested on a charge on which you have already been tried and acquitted!"
"But of course you can't," said Langholm. "Who has put that into her head, Mrs. Woodgate?"
"The place is hemmed in by police."
"Since when?" asked Langholm, quickly.
"Only this morning."
Langholm held his tongue. So the extortioner Abel, outwitted by the amateur policeman, had gone straight to the professional force! The amateur had not suspected him of such resource.
"I don't think this has anything to do with Mrs. Steel," he said at last; "in fact, I think I know what it means, and I shall be only too glad to reassure her, if I can."
But his own face was not reassuring, as Hugh Woodgate plainly told him in the first words which the vicar contributed to the discussion.
"I have been finding out things—I have not been altogether unsuccessful—but the things are rather on my mind," the author explained. "How does Steel take the development, by the way?"