“As true as I lie ’ere. I never went near the place till I went up to the loft at seven or thereabouts.”
“No one saw you? You didn’t beg from any one while you were at the corner of the lane and the highroad?”
“Not a soul come near me save a car or two. Not a soul that’d speak for me. I ain’t got no luck, I ’aven’t. Never ’ad!” The little man’s voice was bitter.
Fayre bent over him, struck by a sudden idea.
“Nothing turned up the lane to the farm while you were lying there, did it?” he asked.
A gleam of suspicion crept into the tramp’s furtive eyes. He distrusted everybody on principle, especially people who asked abrupt questions, but he had not the courage or the intelligence to lie.
“There was one car,” he admitted cautiously. “They wouldn’t ’ave seen me, though. It was dark and I was out of range of the lights.”
Grey took up the interrogation eagerly, speaking softly so that his words should not reach the ears of the policeman sitting in the chair by the window.
“Can you remember what the car was like? Was it too dark to see who was in it?”
The little man looked at him with weary scorn. He was tired of being on the defensive and wanted, above all things, to be left alone.