I turned and looked, casually. It was a house like another, and I said so. George asked me how far I thought it was from the passage in which I had nearly fielded Raphael’s knife with my ear. I said it must be a good way. Two hundred yards at least. There was a whole block of warehouses and a row of houses in between.
“Quite,” said George. We walked on. “Then how did Mr. Raphael get there so quick? Not by the road. I just saw a piece of his delightful face round the curtain of one of the windows. His one mistake, to have let me see him. There must be an underground passage about two hundred yards long between his warehouse address and his residence. You’ll bet the police have never spotted it yet, and I only spotted it because he was so eager to see us well away. I don’t think he likes us, Charles. But I’d be pleased to know who is supposed to be living in that house. And I’d take a bet that there’s a nice counterfeiting matinée going on this very moment somewhere between that house and that warehouse passage. Now you say something.”
“The point is, George, do you think he saw you spot him?”
Tarlyon smiled. “There’s always a catch. Trust the God of the Jews to lay a snag for poor Gentiles. But I don’t know. He mayn’t have seen I got him. But we will have to act as if he had. Get him quick, else he’ll be in the air. What’s the time now? Nearly eight. We’ll get back to civilisation, try and catch H—— at his home address, come down here to-night and surround the place. Fun. Hurray!”
I said: “Look here, George——”
He looked at me sharply. “I know what you are going to say, Charles. Don’t say it. You’re old enough to know better.”
But I stuck to my point. We must let H—— know at once, yes. Post men at the warehouse entrance and the house entrance, certainly. Catch Julian Raphael and his friends, decidedly. But we must give Manana Cohen another chance. She was only a child—twenty-one or two at most.
George said: “Charles, don’t be a silly old man. She is probably as bad as any of them. You can’t tell. Girls don’t live a life like that unless they want to.”
I knew he was wrong. I just knew it. So I didn’t argue, but stuck to my point. The girl must be got out of the way before the place was raided. If the police found her there, she would be jailed—perhaps for years. I simply wouldn’t have it. The girl was at the beginning of her life. To jail her now would be to ruin her for all her life.
Tarlyon, of course, didn’t need to be convinced. He was only leading me on. Tarlyon wouldn’t have put the police on a girl for trying to boil him in oil. But I was right about Manana Cohen. Good God, don’t I know I was right! This had been her life, was her life, these dreary streets, these foul alleys. Julian Raphael had found her, dazzled her, seduced her, bullied her, broken her. What chance had the girl, ever? She was timorous, you could see. A timid girl. No matter how kindly you talked to her, she stared at you like a rabbit at a stoat. Life was the stoat to Manana Cohen. Who knows what the girl hadn’t already suffered in her small life, what hell? Maybe she had loved Julian Raphael, maybe she loved him now. That wasn’t against her. Saints love cads. It’s the only way you can know a saint, mostly. Some of the nicest women you and I know, Hilary, have been divorced for the love of blackguards. Well, if Manana loved Raphael she would be punished enough by seeing him go to prison for a long stretch. One might find her a job on the stage, with her looks and figure. Good Lord, the way that girl looked at you when you so much as opened your mouth, her black eyes shivering as though her heart was hurt.