“Tell me——” I whispered.
“Tell you what, my dear?” She bent towards me.
“Did they get him?”
“Whom do you mean, Doris dear?” She looked puzzled.
“Your brother. Did the police get him?”
A great relief flashed into her face.
“Ronald! Oh no. He got quite safely away from Adelaide. His friend wrote to me after the ship had sailed: there had been no difficulty at all. That worry is ended, thank God!”
“Oh!” I said weakly. “Then it wasn’t he—in the library? I thought it was.”
“In the library? You—you don’t mean the burglar? Why, my dear child, that was Bence!”
“Bence! Not the chauffeur?” Bence had always been especially civil to me. I felt a guilty pang, remembering how hard I had tried to hit him with the poker.