Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/100

88 thought the matter over you shall hear from me again, but I cannot act without consideration. Thank you all the same.”

She carried it off with an air which took the constable aback. He was not best pleased. He eyed her for a second or two, then he closed his notebook with a snap.

“Very good. Of course, if you won’t make a charge I can’t take it. All I can say is, that if you find yourself in the same hole again, it’ll about serve you right if no one comes to help you. It’s because people won’t go into court that there’s so much of this sort of thing about. What’s the good of having laws if you won’t let them protect you.”

Off he strode in a huff. I stared after him a little blankly.

“I don’t think, Pollie, that you need have been quite so short with him. What he says is true; we might have been murdered if it hadn’t been for him.”

“I wasn’t short with him; I didn’t mean to be. But I couldn’t charge them—could I? Besides, I want to get in. I didn’t want to have him hanging about, for I don’t know how long, watching us.”

“Someone else may be watching us.”

“No fear of that; they’ve had enough of it for to-night.”

“So you said before, and hardly had you said there was nothing to fear when they had us at their mercy. It’s my belief that what your uncle said in that letter—which now they’ve got—is true, and that we are in peril, dreadful peril, and that though we mayn’t know it someone is watching us all the time. For my part I should like that policeman to have kept his eye upon us until we were safe indoors.”

“After what my uncle said about allowing no one to see us enter?”

“It’s a pity you are not equally particular about everything your uncle said, my dear.”