The Inspector handed her a letter.
“From Superintendent Strong to my Chief,” he said.
She took it and as she read her face went now white with fear, now red with indignation. At length she flung the letter down.
“What a man he is to be sure!” she cried scornfully. “And what nonsense is this he writes. With all his men and officers he must come for my husband! What is HE doing? And all the others? It's just his own stupid stubbornness. He always did object to our marriage.”
The Inspector was silent. Cameron was silent too. His boyish face, for he was but a lad, seemed to have grown old in those few minutes. The Inspector wore an ashamed look, as if detected in a crime.
“And because he is not clever enough to catch this man they must come for my husband to do it for them. He is not a Policeman. He has nothing to do with the Force.”
And still the Inspector sat silent, as if convicted of both crime and folly.
At length Cameron spoke.
“It is quite impossible, Inspector. I can't do it. You quite see how impossible it is.”
“Most certainly you can't,” eagerly agreed the Inspector. “I knew from the first it was a piece of—sheer absurdity—in fact brutal inhumanity. I told the Commissioner so.”