She paled a little and shrank back.
“I did not say I should tell the police,” I went on. “Indeed, I decline to discuss the point. I retain absolute freedom and if you prefer to say good-bye, well, the decision rests with you.”
“The fact is,” Thoyne blurted out, “the thing is so much a nightmare to us, that we must settle it one way or the other. It would be better almost to know the worst than to rest in continual doubt.”
“But why come to me?”
“Because we think you can help us.”
“I am not a detective: I take no fees: I go my own way: I make no promises.”
“We accept your conditions,” Thoyne said, with a glance at Kitty who nodded an affirmative.
The story they told me was certainly interesting and what they omitted at the first telling, I managed to elicit by subsequent questioning.
Sir Philip Clevedon, it seemed, had given Kitty to understand that her brother was in some danger, though he had been judiciously vague, depending more upon hints, suggestions and innuendo than on definite statements. He was easily able to startle an impressionable girl where a man or an older woman might have been able to extract the truth from him by a process of cross-examination.
Only one thing stood out clear, that Billy was in some kind of a mess from which it would cost far more money than she possessed to extricate him, and that Sir Philip would find the cash if she consented to marry him, which she did. Sir Philip’s action could only be justified by the old adage that “All’s fair in love and war.” Undoubtedly he was very much in love with her which may be urged as his justification. “I have wealth and a title and I am not an old man,” he said to her, “and you have youth and beauty; it is not an unequal bargain.” That was true enough. Marriages far less appropriate occur every day. But nothing would have induced Miss Kitty Clevedon to consent except the thought that by her sacrifice she was saving her brother from some disaster, the details of which she did not understand.