"Me, sir?" replied Roberts, bitterly. "I've bin fetched out to see murdered women and——"
"Not—not Miss Cheyne!" gasped the young man.
A queer little smile looped up one corner of Cleek's mouth.
"Hello, hello!" he said, mentally, "someone else knows of it, eh?" Here was somebody who, to his way of thinking, jumped to right conclusions too quickly. Why should Sir Edgar Brenton, as he knew this man to be, know that it should be Miss Cheyne, unless—and here Cleek's mind raced on wings of doubt again—unless he himself had killed Miss Cheyne? And if so, who was this woman——?
As if from some distance he could hear Roberts's grumbling bellow:
"Miss Cheyne? Lor', don't you go for to say you've got that bee in your bonnet, too, Sir Edgar. It is quite enough with this gent, Lieutenant Deland, a-coming and fetching me away from my bit of supper. What my missis will say remains to be 'eard, as they says. 'Deed, no, Miss Cheyne's as live as you, and in a thunderin' bad temper——"
"Thank the Lord!" ejaculated the young squire in a low, fervent undertone.
"An' what made you think, if I might be so bold, Sir Edgar, that it was Miss Cheyne?" asked the constable curiously, voicing Cleek's unspoken thought.
That gentleman cleared his throat before answering.
"It was just a chance hit, Roberts," said he, but his voice held an odd little crabbed note in it. "You see, you were coming straight from Cheyne Court, so it couldn't have been any one else."