Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/256

 "He has not," said Trafford quietly. "All that he hinted at I've known for weeks."

"Did you know it when you saw me before?"

Trafford nodded.

"Why did you conceal it?"

"It's not concealment not to talk of a thing. There was no call to talk of it so long as it had nothing to do with the murder."

"But are you certain," the words came hard and with a painful ring, "that it did have nothing to do with the murder?"

The question showed Trafford how far pain and numbing anguish had carried the man who, loyal even to the death of honour to the mother who bore him, on that very account was the deeper sufferer.

"Absolutely!" Trafford threw into the word an intense depth of conviction. "On that point you may exclude every doubt."

Matthewson gave him a look of intense relief. He was reasonably certain as to Cranston; but if there was a chain of circumstances, as there well might be, between this story and the recent murder, what was to save them?