Miss Austin cerebrated.
"No," she admitted unwillingly, "you don't strike one as that sort. But then you might argue that she is reasonably sure of acquittal and you would have scant hope of escaping the chair."
Rush laughed aloud. It was a harsh sound, but there was no nervousness in it, and he continued to look interrogatively at Miss Austin. He had barely noticed her before, but he observed that she was a handsome girl with a clean-cut honest face, a bright detecting eye, and the slim well-set-up figure of an athletic boy. Her peculiar type of good looks was displayed to its best advantage by the smartly tailored suit.
"You hardly look the sort to run a man down," he murmured, and this time he smiled.
"One gets mighty keen on the chase in this business." They turned into the deep shade of Elsinore Avenue, and she stood still and lowered her voice. "If you would tell me," she said, "I'd swear never to betray you."
"Then why ask me to confess?"
"Oh—it sounds rather banal—but I want to write fiction, big fiction, and I want to come up against the big tragedies and secrets of the human soul. If you would tell me the whole story, exactly how you have felt at every stage and phase before and since, I feel almost sure that I could write as big a book as Dostoiewsky's "Crime and Punishment"—not half so long, of course. If we learn from other nations, we can teach them a thing or two in return. You may ask what you are to expect in return for a dangerous confidence. I not only never would betray you, but I'd make it my study to divert suspicion from pointing your way. I could do it, too. You are safe as far as Alys is concerned. The secret is oppressing her terribly, and she's driven by the fear that her conscience will suddenly revolt and force her to speak out—particularly if Mrs. Balfame broke down in jail, to say nothing of a possible conviction—not that I believe anything short of conviction would open her lips. You are the last person on earth she would hand over to the law; it seems odd to me you can't realise that for yourself."
"Realise what?"
"Oh, I've no patience with men! I never did share the platitudinous belief in propinquity. Why, Alys has turned half the heads in Park Row. Even the austere city editor is beginning to hover. How any man could pass a live wire like Alys Crumley by—and distractingly pretty—for a woman old enough to be her mother!"