I do not know whether at another time I might have answered better, but I could remember only a confused crowd of passengers, porters, taxi-cabs, and motors. Yes, and the woman who had looked after us while she asked her way of a policeman.
Why had she looked after us?
I could no more tell them that than I could tell why both she and the policeman had followed us with such unfriendly eyes.
"Ah!"—the inspector exchanged glances with the Healer—"a possible clue there."
I could not imagine what he meant. I could not believe that he meant anything when I saw the expressionless yellow face turned to Mrs. Harborough to say that "in any case" the Victoria policeman would not be on duty now. The inspector talked about what they would do to-morrow.
"To-night—to-night; what can we do to-night?"
He brought a piece of yellow paper. He put the questions over again, and this time he wrote the answers down with a stump of worn lead-pencil. The glazed paper was like the man, it took impressions grudgingly; it held them very faint.
While the blunt lead-pencil laboured across the sheet, something that other man had said to me in the house of horror flashed back across my mind. I had not believed him at the time, still less now, in the presence of the guardians of the City—all these grave and decent people.
Shamefaced I asked Mrs. Harborough if the inspector knew of "any house where a woman takes young girls."
She and all the rest were one as silent as the other, till I steadied my voice to say again, this time to the man himself: "You have no knowledge, then, of 'such a place'?"