“Mr. Sorley!” he said softly, and rising with caution.
“Oh God!” gasped the man, dropping the light, and suppressing a scream.
In the darkness Alan groped his way forward. “Don’t be afraid. It is Alan Fuller. I am your friend.
“Alan,” the young man heard the click of the door, and knew that the fugitive was making for his hiding-place. But he halted when hearing the voice and the name. “Alan,” said Sorley in the darkness, and his quavering voice hinted at relief. “Oh thank heaven you have come! How did you guess——”
“Marie and granny heard certain noises,” said Alan quickly.
“Yes,” muttered Sorley, lighting another candle which he apparently took out of his pocket, since the fallen one was lying near the panel. “I was not so careful as I should have been. But it could not go on for ever, so I am glad you have come, Alan. I want help,” his voice trembled piteously, “yes I want help to escape.”
In this turn the young man lighted the candle he had kept beside him, and in the radiance of the two tapers surveyed the broken-down creature before him, who looked quite his age, if not more. His face and hands were black with dust and dirt, his clothes were stained and torn, while his beard had grown considerably, and despair lurked in his sunken eyes. In place of the alert, soldierly man of yore, Alan beheld a trembling, shivering, cringing thing, wincing at every sound, shrinking from every shadow. Guilty or not, Sorley was surely paying in full for his sins, since the agony and terror of his soul was made manifest in his body. “And I am innocent,” he muttered again and again.
“If you are innocent why do you wish me to help you to escape?” asked Mr. Fuller gravely.
“Because I can’t prove my innocence,” said Sorley with sudden energy. “I am in a net woven by that infernal woman.”
“Your wife?”