Gilbert made a slight inclination of his head.
The pleasant-looking man pulled a paper out of his pocket and read something.
Gilbert bowed again.
"It is only a short distance, Mr. Lothian," said the pleasant-looking man cheerfully, "and I am sure you will go with me perfectly quietly."
As he said it he gave a half jerk of his head towards the corridor where, quite obviously, satellites were waiting.
Gilbert Lothian put out his hands. One wrist was crossed over the other. "I am not at all sure," he said, "that I shall come with you quietly, so please put the manacles upon my wrists."
The pleasant gentleman did so. Father Joseph Edward followed the pleasant gentleman and Gilbert Lothian.
As the little cortège turned out of the Committee room, Julia Daly turned to Dr. Morton Sims.
Her face was radiant. "Oh," she said, "at last I know!"
"You know?" he said, horror still struggling within him, much as he would have wished to control it, "you know nothing, Julia! You do not know that the dreadful power of heredity has repeated itself within a circumscribed pattern. You do not know that this man, Lothian, has done—in his own degree and in his own way—just what a bastard brother of his did two years ago. The man who was begotten by Gilbert Lothian's father killed his wife. Gilbert Lothian has done so too."