Rabone spoke again: “Can you give me change for ten shillings?”
“Not at the moment.”
“So I supposed.” He pulled out a pocket-book fat with notes. Evidently it was not poverty which caused him to choose that modest, if respectable lodging.
He took out a pound-note, hesitated between that and one for half the amount, and finally selected two of ten shillings each, which he passed across the table.
Francis looked at the money, letting it lie. The action was generous in itself, but it was evidently without goodwill. Its manner made it an insult, very hard not to refuse.
But suppose that the girl had failed, as her delay in returning appeared to indicate? Suppose that she were waiting now for the opportunity to tell him quietly that he could not be too speedy to leave? There might be freedom in those two slips of coloured paper so contemptuously tossed over the cloth. There would surely be rest and food at an urgent need
Anyway, he must learn to obey the orders of all men who could address him as Harold Vaughan, even though they offered no money to enforce their wills.
He picked it up with a conventional word of thanks which did attempt pretence of gratitude, as for a friend’s aid, nor that he was in less than an utter need. He said: “We will call it a loan. You shall have it back during the next few days.”
“Call it what you will. You must be gone from here when I get back. That’s at six tonight.”
He rose, and went up to his room. Ten minutes later Francis heard him leave, and almost immediately after Miss Jones came down.
She had her bag in her hand, from which she drew the cheque-book that he required.
“Was it all right?” he asked. “I was afraid when you didn’t get back—”
“I think so, but I’m not sure. I went to a cashier who was not occupied when I got to the counter, and gave him the note. He was reading it when another customer came up. The cashier looked at him, and then said to me: “Just a moment, please,” and went to the back.
“I thought I should have some trouble to face, but when he returned he just gave me the book in the usual way. The man who came after me had pushed a cheque over to him for payment, and I looked back as I went out of the door, and the cashier wasn’t paying it, but talking to him, with it in his hand.
“That looked as though he had gone behind to enquire something about him rather than me, when he first saw him come up, without wishing to do it so that he would be understood—perhaps to see what his balance was—and I felt easy; but after that I got an idea that I was being followed. It may have been only nervousness, but I went a good way round, to make sure.”
“You are sure?”
“Yes. I mean I’m sure no one followed me here.”
Francis noticed the quiet confidence in her voice, and that she had been sufficiently conversant with banking methods to judge what had occurred in a cool and probable way. He asked: “You won’t mind going again? There’ll be just about time before they close.”
She did not refuse, but neither did she agree. She said:
“It seems rather a needless risk, if we could do it a better way.... I wonder whether you’d care to trust me with a cheque that I could get a firm I know to put through their account? We could get the money in a couple of days.”
“But it could be traced through another bank?”
“I don’t know that that would matter. You’ve got a right to draw cheques on your own account. They wouldn’t give you away.”
He was slow to answer, and there was reserve in her voice when she spoke again: “But I expect you can think of a better plan. Anyway, you’ve got the cheque-book now.”
He saw that he must have appeared distrustful of the offer, and even ungrateful for what she had already done. He was in danger of losing the one friend he had, at a time when friends were his greatest need. He said: “It isn’t that. The fact is I’ve just been told to clear out before six o’clock. Mr. Rabone knows who I am.”
“What did he say?”
He narrated the incident as exactly as possible.
She frowned in thought over this, and then said: “It’s bad luck that he’s guessed, but I don’t think he’ll be in any hurry to let the police know. You needn’t worry much about that.”
He asked with surprise: “You’d advise me to risk it, and stay on.”
“I didn’t say that. It’s not easy to see what’s the safest way. But you might leave here and go somewhere that I could reach, if we thought out a plan.”
“But you don’t think he’ll inform the police? You feel sure that he’s not that sort?
She answered dryly: “No. He’s not that sort.”
He attacked the position irritably from another angle: “I suppose he wanted to have you alone here this evening. That’s really why he wants me to clear.”
She listened to this, and amusement came to her eyes. “I should call that a good guess.... But it isn’t that, all the same. Or not that alone. He thinks you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“If you’d only say what you mean!”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
He checked an impatient reply, and made the effort necessary to control a nervous impatience born of the precarious position in which he stood, and remained silent, waiting for her to say more. He was rewarded with: “You told me a good deal. I wonder whether it wouldn’t save trouble if I were to pay you back in the same coin.”
He became conscious of the boorishness of his previous mood. What obligation had she to him? He said: “Don’t tell me anything you’re not sure I should know. There’s no reason you should. I’d rather trust you than that.”
Indeed, if she were not worthy of trust, what hope could he have? He was in her hands, in more ways than one. If she sought to rob or betray him, it would be easy for her to tell a tale that he could not test. In his position, he must trust entirely, or not at all, and his choice was already made.
But she had formed her own resolution, and his words did not change it, but rather confirmed her judgement that she could give a confidence which he would not betray.
“Trust’s all right,” she said, “but it’s simpler to understand. I don’t think you’ll give me away to Mr. Rabone, and still less that you’ll set the police on him, though I shouldn’t care if you did, so long as my name wasn’t anywhere in the bill....
“Mr. Rabone is a bank inspector. He’s on the staff of the London & Northern. Bank inspectors have to be men of good character. If they haven’t got private means, the bank expects them to live within their salaries, which are substantial, but nothing more.
“Mr. Rabone is a man against whose financial record nothing is known. He is separated from his wife, but that’s
