"All right, we'll let it go at that. Now as to Ferguson—you'll have to get word to him at once. Is he in the country?"
"No—he's here. I had a telephone from him this morning to say he was in town and would be at the hotel later in the day. He's probably there now, waiting for me."
"Um!" Larkin considered for a moment. "That's lucky. There's no time to waste. Get his consent and then 'phone me here. Just a word. And you understand he'll have to know the circumstances; he'll have to be wise to everything if he's to play his part."
Suzanne had lied so long and so variously that she did it with a natural ease. No one, having seen her as Larkin had, would have guessed the knowledge she hid. Her air of innocently comprehending his charge was a triumph of duplicity.
"Of course, I know, I understand. It'll be a dreadful surprise to him but he'll see it as I do. And he'll do what I ask—I'm as certain of that as I am of his secrecy."
She would have to have the letter to show him, and Larkin, after a last, careful perusal of it, handed it to her. Then she went, cutting off his heartening words of farewell, making her way out in a quick, noiseless rush. At the desk in the hotel she learned that Ferguson was there, asked to have him apprised of her return and sent at once to her sitting room.
[CHAPTER XXV—MOLLY'S STORY]
The morning after that talk with Ferguson I rose up "loaded for bar." At breakfast I led Dixon round to the old subject—we were good friends now and he'd drop his professional manner when we were alone and talk like a human being. Of course he remembered everything, and opened up as fluent as a gramophone. Willitts hadn't found them at the movies till nearly ten—been delayed on his way in from Cedar Brook, his landlady's little girl had been took bad with croup and he'd gone for the doctor—Dr. Bernard, who was off on a side road half way between Cedar Brook and Berkeley.
That ought to have been enough for me, but having started I thought I'd clear it all up, so I borrowed a bike off Ellen and set out on the double quick for Dr. Bernard's. I saw Mrs. Bernard and heard all I wanted. Willitts had been there on the night of July seventh, came on a bicycle, saw the doctor and gave his message about the sick child. She thought it was somewhere between eight and half-past—the storm was just stopping. I lit out for home; I'd got it all now. He'd gone straight from the doctor's to Grasslands, taken the jewels, and made a short cut back to the main road through the woods to where he'd hidden his wheel.
When you get this far on a case there comes over you a sort of terror that you may slip up. You have it all in your hand, your fingers are stretched to lay hold on the criminal, and an awful fear takes possession of you that right on the threshold of success you may lose. The cup and the lip—that's the idea.