“Bad news?” Helen cried.
Hugh said nothing. He knew.
“They have come for you—they know you are here,” Latham said quietly.
Hugh turned pityingly to Helen—his one thought of her, to comfort her. But Helen, womanlike, was all courage now. She held out both hands; a moment he pressed them, then turned and went, with a soldier’s gait, toward the door.
“Scotland Yard men or a sergeant?” he asked Latham as he passed him.
“Soldiers,” Latham said.
“It’s tecs,” Barker cried in a wrathful panic, bursting through the doorway. “Me not know tecs! That’s likely. I knew it was tecs the ’stant I laid eyes on ’em—dressed up in a uneeform—but they’s tecs.” True to her type, she had sensed “police” even through tunics and khaki. The dullest servant, and the most inexperienced, have an unfailing flare for the “tec.”
Latham pushed her gently from the room, but she ran down the hall crying, “It’s tecs, I tell you; it’s tecs!”
CHAPTER XXXVII
“Military police, I suppose, or a non-com. and two privates,” Hugh said as he and Latham went toward the morning room.