The tramp’s face seemed to grow whiter and more pinched.
“They can’t fix it onto me,” he whispered doggedly.
“They can, unless you can prove that you were not at the farm at six-thirty. You don’t seem to realize that you’re in almost as bad a position as Mr. Leslie.”
“Supposin’ she didn’t see me?” The man was evidently wavering.
“If you saw her she probably saw you.”
The logic of this was so obvious that it reached the tramp’s brain, warped though it was with suspicion. He considered it for a moment; then, raising himself on his elbow, brought his face close to Fayre’s.
“I’ve been a fool,” he whispered. “I see it now. But I was afraid of gettin’ in bad with the police. Will you promise not to pass it on without I tell you?”
“I told you I wouldn’t. Go on.”
“It was this way. I see the woman, like I told you, and I watched her go into the Lodge. Then I went on to the Lodge, meanin’ to ask for a bite of something. When I got there I see something lyin’ in the road and I picks it up. It was a purse. It ’adn’t got much in it, only a ’alf-crown.”
He paused, evidently at a loss as to how to proceed.