“Well, what is it? Let us hear.”
“Will you promise”—her voice trembled with passionate eagerness, “not to make any inquiries, not to give any information, about the murder of the man Blewitt?”
She hissed out the last words below her breath.
But John Thurley shook his head at once and decidedly.
“I couldn’t allow sentiment to interfere with my duty even for you, my dear,” he said in a tone which precluded all hope of his softening. “Besides,” he continued decisively, “as a matter-of-fact, I gave all the information I had to the police long since.”
Without uttering another word or giving him time for one, Freda fled away as if she had been struck. Running round the angle of the wall, and under one of the clustered arches at the south side of the choir, she stumbled, not seeing where she trod, against a heap of grass-grown masonry, and fell to the ground.
Before she could rise, she heard the voice of the man who had frightened her by jumping up behind the wall of the meadow.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Thurley,” said the voice, “but I’ve come to tell you it’s all right. We’ve followed up the clue you sent, and I’ve been sent down here to make the arrest. By to-morrow we shall have John Blewitt’s murderer safe in quod.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
When Freda overheard the words which told her the police were on the track of the murderer, she did not lose a moment in making her way back to the Abbey. Mrs. Bean opened the inner gate, as usual, and was alarmed by the look on the girl’s face.