“It’s because I’m a mental pathologist that I—fear. Symonds suspects. I shouldn’t be surprised if he arrests her within four and twenty hours. He’ll hang her if he finds this cloak.”
“Oh no, he won’t. Nor, if Symonds is the idiot you suppose—he may be, since you’re a judge of idiots—will she remain long under arrest. I shall free her.”
Hume had been pacing up and down like an unquiet spirit. Now he stopped to snarl at me like an angry wolf.
“If you think brawn and muscle can prevail against the police you are a fool.”
“As it happens I am not a fool on those particular lines, because I think nothing of the kind. I shall use other means to free her.”
“What other means?”
“I shall confess.”
“But I thought you said you didn’t do it.”
“Nor did I; nor did she. If Symonds must have a victim, better I than she. To go to the gallows for her sake would be heaven well won.”
Hume stared. I might have been shaking him again, his breath came so hardly.