"It is extraordinarily kind," said Varney. He looked at her steadily, as far from understanding the mystery of her coming as ever.
"But I came," she went on at once, as though reading the question in his eyes, "for quite another reason. We happened to stop just now at poor Jim Hackley's."
The name riveted his attention. A quality in her voice had already told him that something troubled her.
"At Hackley's?"
She stood just behind Peter's deserted chair and rested her ungloved right hand upon it. He noticed, as though it were a matter which was going to be vital to him later on, that she wore no rings, and that there was a tiny white spot on the nail of her thumb.
"Some men are waiting on this dark street somewhere, Mr. Varney," she began hurriedly, "waiting, I'm afraid, for you to come out—four or five—I don't know how many. You know—what that means. But oh, it isn't their fault!—they don't know any better, you see!—"
The sudden anxiety in her voice cleared his wits and braced him like a tonic: and so he came front to front with the fact that it was to help him—to help him—that Uncle Elbert's daughter had come to the Gazette office that night.
"I appreciate that perfectly, of course. But—the rest is not so clear.
I don't quite understand—how did you happen to learn of this?"
"I? Oh, my learning about it was the purest chance. It was told me two minutes ago by a visitor here, a Mr. Higginson, whom I met last night. He is outside in the car now, and—"
"Mr. Higginson!" echoed Varney, astounded.