“If it were anything definite. Just to take up their time with a lot of vague surmises is the last thing they want. People get stampeded in a case like this, butt in with all sorts of silly leads and theories.” He gave her an uneasy side glance. “Are you imagining that you know something you ought to tell?”
“No, oh, no. But I keep thinking of it, all kinds of possibilities.”
“Can’t you stop thinking of it? I wish you would.”
“Oh, Hugh, how can any one? It fills up your mind so that nothing else can get in. It would be so terrible to have to confess something against another person.”
He nodded and murmured, “Terrible, all right.”
“I don’t see how one could do it. Now, you, if you were in that position—had suspicions of some one?”
“I don’t tell them, that’s not my province. I’m here to assist, not to direct them.”
“Just say what you’re sure of?”
“Exactly. What I know, what I can vouch for as fact. I wish to God I could furnish some that would lead us in the right direction.”
She said nothing, her cheek against his shoulder, her head bent down till her face was hidden from him. He looked at the grass at his feet in harassed survey of his obligation: