"All right," he said, "I'm not going to hurt you."
Morley, having yielded, told his story hurriedly, with little pauses here and there, struggling for breath.
"I did miss my train, the midnight," he began. "I really tried to catch it. But, when I found it was gone, I couldn't sleep. I was worried and frightened. This bank business was on my mind. I wanted to think." He forced a mirthless smile at that. "I couldn't think very straight, but I tried to. I couldn't do anything but see myself in jail, in the penitentiary, because of the bank.
"I wandered around without paying any attention to where I was. I'd left my bags in the station. The first thing I knew, I was on Manniston Road, in front of Number Nine—your house. I felt tired, and I sat down on the bottom step. I had on a raincoat. It—it was pitch-dark there.
"The two electric lights, the street lights, on that block were out—had burnt out, or something. The only light I could see was down at the corner, where Manniston Road goes into Freeman Avenue—and that didn't give any light where I was."
"That's true," Bristow said sharply, "but, from where you sat, anybody going up or down the steps of Number Five would have been directly between you and the avenue light. Isn't that so?"
"Yes."
"All right—go ahead. What did you see?"
Morley hitched back his chair still further. He had begun to perspire, and he kept running his fingers round his neck between flesh and collar.
"It was raining," he went on, his voice strained and metallic, "a fine drizzle at that time, and this made a circle of light, a kind of bright screen around the avenue light. Things that happened on, or near, the steps of Number Five were silhouetted against that screen of light.