“No, sir, I don’t think it will,” French returned, answering the last part of the sentence first. “But I don’t know that it’s so unexpected after all. Leastwise it is and it isn’t. I mean, I’m surprised that a man of Mr. Duke’s character should take that way of escaping from his difficulties, but I knew he was in difficulties.”
The chief raised his eyebrows.
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“The truth is, sir, that I didn’t take what the old gentleman said seriously enough. I met him last week in Piccadilly, and he appeared anxious to hear my news and asked me to have a cup of coffee with him. He was pretty down in the mouth then, saying he was getting short of cash, and near the end of his tether, and so on. He was looking pretty old, too, old and worn.”
The chief grunted.
“As I say, I don’t suppose it will make any difference,” he declared. “But there’s that girl to consider. I think you’d better go along and see her. After all, she should have some warning before she sees it in the paper.”
“That’s so, sir. Then I shall go now.”
It was a job he hated, but there was no help for it, and having ’phoned to Miss Duke that he was going out on urgent business, he set off.
That his message had alarmed her was obvious. She met him with pale cheeks and anxious eyes, and once again the thought occurred to him that she knew something that she was holding back, and had feared her secret was the subject of his call.
But his news, when haltingly and with some awkwardness he had succeeded in conveying it, took her utterly by surprise. It was evidently quite different to what she had expected to hear, and the poor girl was terribly overcome. She gave a low cry, and sat gazing at him with eyes dilated with horror. The shock seemed utterly to have benumbed her, and yet French could not help thinking that her emotion contained also an element of relief. He was profoundly sorry for her, but his suspicion remained.