Her eyes held mine for an instant. Then, "Thank you," she said, and turned away. The guard, who had waited outside with something of the effect of a clock about to strike, opened the iron door, and I passed through.
Late that night, after I had turned in my copy and received in acknowledgment the grunt which was Mr. Hurd's highest tribute to satisfactory work, I sat at my desk still thinking of the Brandow case. Suddenly the chair beside me creaked as Godfrey Morris dropped into it.
"Just been reading your Brandow story. Good work," he said, kindly. "Without bias, too. What do you think of the woman now, after meeting her?"
"She's innocent," I repeated, tersely.
"Then she didn't confess?" laughed Morris.
"No," I smiled, "she didn't confess. But if she had been guilty she might have confessed. She talked a great deal."
Morris's eyes widened with interest. The day's work was over, and he was in a mood to be entertained. "Did she?" he asked. "What did she say?"
I repeated the interview, while he leaned back and listened, his hands clasped behind his head.
"She was communicative," he reflected, at the end. "In a mood like that, after months of silence, a woman will tell anything. As you say, if she had been guilty she might easily have given herself away. What a problem it would have put up to you," he mused, "if she had been guilty and had confessed! On the one hand, loyalty to the Searchlight—you'd have had to publish the news. On the other hand, sympathy for the woman—for it would be you who sent her to the electric chair, or remained silent and saved her."
He looked at me quizzically. "Which would you have done?" he asked.