“Not speak?”
“No, she’ll not tell. It’s the young lady you were here about before, Squire, to be frank with you.”
“Miss Damer?” in a tone of astonishment.
“Ay, Squire, she!” Nadin replied. “She! And the young madam knows, d——n her! It’s all one business, you may take it from me! It’s all one gang! She was at the place where they landed after dark last night.”
“Impossible!” Clyne cried. “Impossible! I cannot believe you.”
“Ay, but she was. She let herself down from a window when the house had gone to bed that she might get there. Ay, Squire, you may look, but she did. She did not meet them; she was too soon or too late, we don’t know which. But she was there, as sure as I am here! And I suspect—though Bishop, who is a bit of a softy, like most of those London men, doesn’t agree—that she was in the thing from the beginning, Squire! And planned it, may be, but you’d be the best judge of that. Any way, we are agreed that she knows now. That is clear as daylight!”
“Knows, and will not tell?” Clyne cried. Such conduct seemed too monstrous, too wicked to the man who had strained every nerve to reach his child, who had ridden in terror for hours, trembling at the passage of every minute, grudging the loss of every second. “Knows, and will not tell!” he repeated. “Impossible!”
“It’s not impossible, Squire,” Nadin answered. “We’re clear on it. We’re all clear on it.”
“That she knows where the child is?” incredulously. “Where they are keeping it?”
“That’s it.”