“You will take it,” she cried, “that I—I helped to steal the child?”
“Just so, if you don’t speak,” Nadin repeated, disregarding his fellow’s signals. Firmness, he was sure, was all that was needed. Just firmness.
She was silent in great agitation. They suspected her! Oh, it was wicked, it was vile of them! She would not have touched a hair of the child’s head. And they suspected Walterson; but it might be as falsely, it must be as falsely. Yet if she gave him up, even if he were innocent he would suffer. He would suffer on other charges, and she would have his blood on her hands though she had so often, so often, resolved that she would not be driven to that!
They asked too much of her. They asked her to betray the man to death on the chance—and she did not believe in the chance—that it would restore the child to its father. She shuddered as she thought of the child, as she thought of Anthony Clyne’s grief; she would willingly have done much to help the one and the other. But they asked too much. If it were anything short of the man’s life that they asked, she would be guided, she would do as they bade her. But this step was irrevocable: and she was asked to take it on a chance. Possibly they did not themselves believe in the chance. Possibly they made the charge for their own purposes, their aim to get the man into their power, the blood-money into their purse. She shuddered at that and found the dilemma cruel. But she had no doubt which course she must follow. No longer did any thought of herself or of the annoyances of his arrest weigh with her: thought of the child had outweighed all that. But she would not without proof, without clear proof, have the man’s blood on her hands.
And regarding them with a pale set face,
“If you have proof,” she said, “that he—Walterson—” she pronounced the name with an effort—“was concerned in carrying off the child, I will speak.”
“Proof?” Nadin barked.
“Yes,” she said. “If you can satisfy me that he was privy to this—I will tell you all I know.”
Nadin exploded.
“Proof?” he cried with violence. “Why, by G—d, was he not at the place where we know the men landed? And didn’t you expect to meet him there? And at the very hour?”