ny will arrange
that like winking. You must go at once--and Selwood there will go with
you. Far better for you two young people to go than for either
Halfpenny, or Tertius, or myself. Youth invites confidence."

Peggie turned and looked at Selwood.

"You'll go?" she asked.

Selwood felt his cheeks flush and rose to conceal his sudden show of
feeling. "I'll go anywhere and do anything!" he answered quietly. "I
don't know whether my opinion's worth having, but I think exactly as
Professor Cox-Raythwaite does about this affair. But--who's the guilty
man? Is it--can it be Burchill? If what Barthorpe Herapath says about
that will affair is true, Burchill is cunning and subtle enough for----"

"Burchill, my dear lad, is at present out of our ken," interrupted
Cox-Raythwaite. "Barthorpe, however, is very much within it, and
Halfpenny must arrange for you two to see him without delay. And once
closeted with him, you must talk to him for his soul's good--get him to
search his memory, to think of every detail he can rake up--above
everything, if there's anything he's keeping back, beg him, on your
knees if necessary, to make a clean breast of it. Otherwise----"

Two days later Peggie, sick at heart, and Selwood, nervous and fidgety,
sat in a room which gave both of them a feeling as of partial suffocation.
It was not that it was not big enough for two people, or for six people,
or for a dozen people to sit in--there was space for twenty. What
oppressed them was the horrible sense of formality, the absence of
life, colour, of anything but sure and solid security, the intrusive
spick-and-spanness, the blatant cleanliness, the conscious odour of some
sort of soap, used presumably for washing floors and walls, the whole
crying atmosphere of incarceration. The barred window, the pictureless
walls, the official look of the utterly plain chairs and tables, the
grilles of iron bars which cut the place in half--these things oppressed
the girl so profoundly that she felt as if a sharp scream was the only
thing that would relieve her pent-up feelings. And as she sat there with
thumping heart, dreading the appearance of her cousin behind those bars,
yet wishing intensely that he would come, Peggie had a sudden fearful
realization of what it really meant to fall into the hands of justice.
There, somewhere close by, no doubt, Barthorpe was able to move hands
and feet, legs and arms, body and head--but within limits. He could pace
a cell,