He had come back; he stood before us holding in his hand a piece of yellow paper. Precisely such a piece of paper as that on which already, there in Alton Street, the miserable story was set down. I shall not be believed, but this man, too, began to write on the glazed surface with a stump of blunt lead-pencil.
"Don't wait to write it all again!" I prayed. "Telephone for help...."
But he, too, made little of the need for haste. He, too, made much of what I had noticed as we left Victoria—the homely woman and the policeman watching as we drove away.
"You think," Mrs. Harborough said, "that the woman was suspicious?"
"No doubt—and no doubt the policeman was suspicious too." The inspector spoke with pride: "Oh, we get to know those people! They meet the trains. They're at the docks when ships come in."
It was then I saw that Mrs. Harborough could be stirred too. "If the policeman knew," she said—"if he so much as suspected, why did he not stop the motor?"
The inspector shook his head.
"Why didn't he arrest the woman?"
"He is not allowed," said the inspector.
I was sure he couldn't be telling us the truth. A creeping despair came over me. My first impression had been right. This man was too young, too ignorant, to help in such appalling trouble as ours. He was speaking kindly still. I might be sure they would do all they could to discover the house——