By this time Walter Brooklyn was safe under lock and key. As he reached the door of the court half an hour earlier, he felt a touch on his sleeve, and, turning, saw Inspector Blaikie immediately behind him.
“Well, what do you want now?” he said sullenly.
The inspector beckoned him into a corner, and there showed him the warrant duly made out for his arrest. Walter Brooklyn glanced at it. For a moment he drew himself up to his full height and grasped his stick tightly as if he were considering the prospects of a mad struggle for liberty. Then he gave a short laugh. “I will come with you,” he said; and then he added suddenly, with a fury the more impressive because its utterance was checked—“you damned little fool of a policeman.”
“Come, come, Mr. Brooklyn,” said the inspector. “I’m only doing my duty.” Walter Brooklyn made no reply, and the inspector added: “Are you ready now?”
“Call a taxi,” said Walter. “I suppose you will not walk me handcuffed through the streets,” he added bitterly.
“Certainly not,” said the inspector, and he hailed a passing taxi, and signed to his prisoner to get in.
A small crowd had collected by this time, and stood gaping on the pavement as the taxi drove away.
Chapter XIV.
Mainly a Love Scene
Joan had fully intended to see her stepfather before the inquest and to warn him of his danger and get him to tell the truth to her at least. When Ellery came to visit her on the Thursday afternoon—the inquest was on Friday—she had been on the point of setting out for his club, with the set purpose of making him tell her the whole story. Just before dinner time, she knew, was the most likely hour for finding him at home. There would probably be difficulty in persuading him to talk freely, even to her; but she thought that she would know how to manage him. It was still too early to start, however, and she had ample time to see Ellery first. A talk with him was just what she wanted. He would sympathise with her, and, she was sure, he was just the man to help her where Carter Woodman had failed. He would throw himself into the case, and aid her to find out what she ought to do in order to clear her stepfather of the suspicion which lay upon him. Since her talk with Woodman, she had come to realise fully how grave that suspicion was; but she was sure that Bob—she and Ellery had called each other by their Christian names ever since they were children—would not only take her word for it that Walter Brooklyn could not possibly be guilty of the crimes, but be ready to use his wits and his time in proving the suspected man’s innocence. She did not quite tell herself that he would do all this because he was in love with her; but neither did she quite admit to herself that she would not have asked him unless she had been in love with him.
There was some embarrassment—of which Joan was fully conscious—in Robert Ellery’s manner as he rose to greet her. “I hope I’m not in the way,” he said awkwardly, blushing as he said it.