“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” she asked grimly.
What should I answer? Could I tell her the truth? “Who are you?” she repeated impatiently, gazing on me. “You are not Wilton. Tell me. Who are you?”
The face, hard as it was, seamed with the record of a rough and evil life, as it appeared, had yet a kindly look as it was turned on me.
“My name is Dudley,—Giles Dudley.”
“Where is Wilton?”
“Dead.”
“Dead? Did you kill him?” The half-kindly look disappeared from her eyes, and the hard lines settled into an expression of malevolent repulsiveness.
“He was my best friend,” I said sadly; and then I described the leading events of the tragedy I had witnessed.
The old woman listened closely, and with hardly the movement of a muscle, to the tale I told.
“And you think he left his job to you?” she said with a sneer.