“Thank you, Samuels; I must see her.”
And brushing past the rather bewildered butler, he mounted the stairs and entered the drawing-room unceremoniously. Minna rose angrily from her chair, keeping her thumb between the pages of the novel she was reading. Dressed in a loose dressing-gown, with her hair pinned up untidily, she was all the more incensed at his interruption.
“I told Samuels—” she began, with a petulant stamp of the foot.
“Yes, I know,” he interrupted. “I disregarded him. This is not a time for politeness. The police are after me. I may be arrested at any moment. They know that I did not reach home till the morning. I am caught in a trap. I must account for my actions between half-past eleven and seven.”
She turned as white as a sheet. The novel slipped from her fingers to the carpet.
“Impossible,” she said.
“What’s impossible?”
“That they should arrest you. They have no evidence. Oh! it is absurd.”
“Absurd or not, they will.”
Rapidly he sketched his position. She listened motionless, and with quivering lips.