“How does the lad come here?” demanded Fuller indignantly, “and what have you been doing to him that he should be in this terrible state?”
“He knows the truth,” snarled Sorley, who looked quite wolfish at the moment, and cast a vindictive look at his victim, “and I have been trying to starve it out of him.”
“But y’ haven’t,” murmured Jotty feebly, game to the last, “gimme sumthin’ t’ eat an’ drink, mister, or I’m a goner,” and his head dropped as though he would die then and there. But Sorley only laughed at his sufferings.
“I was certain that the boy knew the truth,” he declared savagely; “and when he came to warn me I lured him to the cellars and locked him up.”
“Without food?” questioned Alan with horror, and knelt by the boy to put one of the biscuits Sorley had left on the table between his lips.
“No, I fed him occasionally,” said the man sullenly, “but kept him short so that starvation might make him speak.”
“But it didn’t,” murmured Jotty again, trying to eat the biscuit.
“Little devil!” cried Sorley in a transport of rage. “I’ll make you admit that you are in league with that woman to ruin me before I’ve done. It was because you were locked in the cellar and no one but I knew where you were, that I bolted from Moon in London. If I had been locked up you would have died of starvation, and, bad as you are, I didn’t want that. And now you know,” he said defiantly to Alan, “why I changed my mind after giving myself up. It only occurred to me that Jotty might starve when I was in the cab driving to Bow Street with Moon. I therefore determined to get away in the fog, and I did.”
“You should have told Moon where the boy was to be found,” said Fuller in sharp tones. “Hand me that flask of whisky; the boy is nearly dead.”
“Oh I hope not, I hope not,” said Sorley in alarm, and anxiously watching the young man moistening Jotty’s lips with the powerful spirit. “I didn’t mean that he should die, for then he would take his secret with him, and I might be hanged through Louisa’s lies. As to telling Moon about the cellars, I wasn’t such a fool,” he went on in an injured tone. “I wasn’t going to reveal my hiding-place, which I knew would come in useful, if I were driven to extremities. But I’m poor old man, and everyone is against me,” he ended sobbing bitterly.