“You may be right; I don’t know—and neither do you. But do you realise that you came near causing an innocent man to be jailed for the theft?”
“But I didn’t. He got away.”
“But not Iff alone—there’s myself. Have you paused to consider what would have happened to me if the inspector had happened to find that necklace in the hat? Heavens knows how he missed it! He was persistent enough!... But if he had found it, I’d have been jailed for theft.”
“Oh, no,” she said sweetly; “I’d never have let it go that far.”
“Not even if to confess would mean that you’d be sent to jail for smuggling?”
“They’d never do that to a woman....”
But her eyes shifted from his uneasily, and he saw her colour change a trifle.
“You know better than that. You read the papers—keep informed. You know what happened to the last woman who tried to smuggle. I forgot how long they sent her up for—five months, or something like that.”
She was silent, her gaze evasive.
“You remember that, don’t you?”