CHAPTER IX
NOT AT BERLIN
“
Hanged, or condemned to penal servitude for life.”
There fell a dead silence after Jim Cayley uttered those ominous words. He waited for me to speak, but for a minute or more I was dumb. He had voiced the fear that had been on me more or less vaguely ever since I broke open the door and saw Cassavetti’s corpse; and that had taken definite shape when I heard Freeman’s assertion concerning “a red-haired woman.”
And yet my whole soul revolted from the horrible, the appalling suspicion. I kept assuring myself passionately that she was, she must be, innocent; I would stake my life on it!
Now, after that tense pause, I turned on Jim furiously.
“What do you mean? Are you mad?” I demanded.
“No, but I think you are,” Jim answered soberly. “I’m not going to quarrel with you, Maurice, or allow you to quarrel with me. As I told you before, I am only warning you, for your own sake, and for Anne’s. You know, or suspect at least—”
“I don’t!” I broke in hotly. “I neither know nor suspect that—that she—Jim Cayley, would you believe Mary to be a murderess, even if all the world declared her to be one? Wouldn’t you—”