Page:Lady Molly of Scotland Yard.pdf/78

LADY MOLLY OF SCOTLAND YARD broad, somewhat heavy jaw. In response to Lady Molly’s invitation he sat down and began with extraordinary abruptness:

"I suppose you know what I have come about—er—miss?" he suggested.

"Well!" she replied, holding up his own card, "I can guess."

"My son, miss—I mean ma'am," he said in a husky voice. "He is innocent. I swear it by the living"

He checked himself, obviously ashamed of this outburst; then he resumed more calmly.

"Of course, there's the business about the coat, and that coat did belong to my son, but"

"Well, yes?" asked Lady Molly, for he had paused again, as if waiting to be encouraged in his narrative, "what about that coat?"

"It has been found in London, miss," he replied quietly. "The fiendish brutes who committed the crime thought out this monstrous way of diverting attention from themselves by getting hold of my son's coat and making the actual assassin wear it, in case he was espied in the gloom."

There was silence in the little study for awhile. I was amazed, aghast at the suggestion put forward by that rough north-countryman, that sorely stricken father who spoke with curious intensity of language and of feeling. Lady Molly was the first to break the solemn silence.

"What makes you think, Mr. Shuttleworth, that 58