Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/84

72 "After midnight, in—in a towering rage."

"In a towering rage? With whom?"

"Well, sir,"—Mr. Morley came closer; he cast an anxious glance around him; he dropped his voice—"I'm not a talkative man, not as a rule, as any one who knows me will tell you; but I've got something to say which I feel I must say to some one, though you heard what Dr. Hume said. But, perhaps, sir, as you're Mr. Edwin's friend, you're Mr. Philip's too."

"Mr. Morley, in making any statement to me, you will be at least as safe as if you made it to Dr. Hume. I tell you that I believe your master's hands are clean. To prove it, we shall have to establish the truth. If you have anything to say which will go to make the darkness light, say it, like a man, before it's too late."

"You won't use it to do him a disservice? And you won't say that I talked about him in a way I didn't ought to have done?"

"I will do neither of these things."

"Well, sir, I like your looks; you look like the kind of gentleman one can trust, and I flatter myself I'm a pretty good judge of faces; and—and the way you handled Dr. Hume was"—he coughed behind his hand—"queer. I'll make a clean breast of it."

The old gentleman's hesitation had its amusing side; I was conscious that something very