But Betty Kane was no normal adolescent. She was the girl who had told that long and circumstantial story to the police without a tremor. The girl with four weeks of her life unaccounted for. The girl that someone had ended by beating unmercifully. How, then, had Betty Kane spent her unsupervised freedom?
"Did she go to Milford on the bus, do you know?"
"No, they asked me that, of course, but I couldn't say yes or not."
"They?"
"The police."
Yes, of course; he had forgotten for the moment that the police would have checked Betty Kane's every sentence to the limit of their power.
"You're not police, I think you said."
"No," Robert said yet once again, "I'm a lawyer. I represent the two women who are supposed to have detained Betty."
"Oh, yes. You told me. I suppose they have to have a lawyer like anyone else, poor things. To ask questions for them. I hope I'm telling you the things you want to know, Mr. Blayne."
He had another cup of tea in the hope that sooner or later she would tell him something he wanted to know. But it was mere repetition now.