Moon nodded, and looked curiously at Alan’s drawn face, and disordered clothes, and especially at his feet which were without slippers. “I came down late last night to Lewes,” he explained, “and drove over early this morning. That is why I am here at so unexpected an hour. And even if Miss Grison had not wired me, I should have come, although perhaps later. Miss Inderwick’s remark about noises in her house——”
“Yes! yes!” interrupted Fuller with a shiver, for the dewy grass chilled his feet. “I guessed that you would come after that unconscious hint.”
“Well of course Miss Inderwick naturally; wants to save her uncle——”
Miss Grison interrupted the inspector in her turn. “She won’t though, try as she will. I know all the hiding-places in The Monastery, and wherever Sorley may conceal himself I can hunt him out.”
“He doesn’t wish to conceal himself,” said Fuller coldly, for the look of malicious triumph on her sallow face was terrible. “He is in the library and wishes to give himself up.”
“He did so before,” remarked Moon dryly, “and then ran away.”
“Because he had Jotty locked up in a cellar here, and feared lest the boy should starve to death. Come in, Mr. Inspector. This is surely the beginning of the end.”
“The end, the end,” cried Miss Grison joyfully, and absolutely chanted the words as if they were the funeral hymn of a victim, “the end of the beast and all his wickedness. I hope they’ll let me see him hanged. And he’ll have no coffin, but be buried in lime and——”
“Hold your tongue,” said Moon roughly, for even his tried nerves gave way with a quiver when the vindictive woman expressed her unholy joy. “Come on, Mr. Fuller. I’m glad you didn’t help this man to escape.”
“I never intended to,” Alan assured the officer as they stepped into the room through the open window, followed by Miss Grison, who slunk behind like halting Nemesis, silent and sinister. “I forced him to stay and surrender.”