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      The tone was noncommittal, if nothing worse. He became aware that he might have to face refusal of his request. But he could not deny that his programme would involve a second call at the bank, and one that should be made very promptly after the first. He said: “You see, I haven’t got a penny till I can get a cheque cashed. And I don’t want to stay here longer than I’m obliged.”

      She turned the conversation to ask: “Any special reason for that? You don’t think anyone saw you come in?”

      “No. It’s a different reason.” He hesitated a moment. Was he being as utter a fool as Tony Welch had made him before? But he had the sense to see that he had gone too far for a safe retreat: that to give her a doubt as to whether he were being entirely frank would be worse than to have said nothing at all. After that momentary hesitation, he narrated the conversation that he had overheard the evening before.

      “It does make it a bit awkward,” she said thoughtfully. “I was going to suggest that you might stay here safely for a few days, if you could keep out of Mr. Rabone’s way, and in that time I might get you the money by other means, if you’d trust me enough for that. I don’t know much about how soon they offer rewards for escaped prisoners, nor whether they do it at all, but I shouldn’t think there’d be any rush to begin. But if the woman next door’s got the idea, she’s more likely to talk than not, and—well, it’s not raining much now, so if you’ll write the note while I’m upstairs, I’ll get ready to go.” He had to ask for further assistance, having neither paper nor pen, but she was soon ready, and armed with a note from Francis Hammerton, headed with his private address, and requesting his bankers to provide him with a book containing twenty-four uncrossed cheques, and to charge it to his account.

      “If I’m not back,” she said, “in the next hour, you’ll know that something’s happened at the bank which makes me think it’s not safe. In that case, you must trust me to come back, or find some other means of letting you know, as soon as I safely can.”

      “But,” he protested, with the fuller realization of what he was asking her to risk and do which her words brought, “I couldn’t ask you to do that. How would you—?”

      She interrupted him to reply: “I only said if. I don’t expect there’ll be any trouble at all. I just wanted you to understand that if I’m not back in an hour, it won’t mean that I’m forging cheques all over the place. I expect the bank will hand it out without giving me more than a look. Why shouldn’t they? There doesn’t seem to be anyone but this Bob Powell you mention who could connect you with your real name, and you’d have heard before now if he’d let that out, and in a different way.”

      She turned to go, and then hesitated, as though having something further to say. But then she thought: “I don’t suppose, if I told him, that it would enable him to get clear in time.”

      She had a second impulse that came near to speech, but checked herself again with the thought: “Well, if that happened, he’d find out soon enough; and it would mean explaining a lot if I said it now.” She repeated: “I don’t suppose I shall be more than an hour,” and went out.

      She left him puzzled in mind, but feeling that he had been fortunate in gaining a friend at so great a need.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      Francis became more nervous of the window as the rain ceased and the light improved. He would not retire to his own room, being alert by that time for the girl’s return, but he sat by the fire in what he thought would be a natural pose to the eyes of anyone who might glance in, and which kept his face hidden behind the pages of the Daily Record. Doing this, he found after a time that it required an effort of will to move the paper away, lest his eyes should confront those of some suspicious officer of the law gazing in from the street upon a lodger whom Mrs. Benson had acquired during the previous day.

      He told himself irritably that he was a damnable coward, and that it would be better to give himself up at once than to allow his fears to make a purgatory of every hour of the day. But he defended himself from his own contempt with the argument that his empty pockets, and the inaction that they entailed, were responsible for these nervous fears that reason would not control. If he could be active on his own behalf—how soon would she be back?

      He calculated the time which the journey would require. With all allowances, even to an imagined crowd at the bank counter, it should be done in an hour. He could not make it longer than that.

      But the hour passed, and a half-hour beyond, and she did not come. He must conclude, from her own assurance, that this delay was a sign either that she had been detained or followed, which stirred him to a new fear.

      Would she be sufficiently skilful to dodge pursuit, or would she be traced by those whom his own folly would have guided to his retreat? Or was she now being detained and questioned with a severity which she could not indefinitely sustain? Or, perhaps, herself under some charge which his own knowledge of law was not sufficient to formulate to his own fears, as having applied for a cheque-book without being able or willing to give a proper account of how she came to be sent on such an errand? Could he reasonably expect that she would sustain such an inquisition for one who had given her such casual employment, and had been a stranger to her three hours before?

      While he tried to control these impatient doubts, Mrs. Benson appeared to spread a cloth for the midday meal. He thought she looked at him in a sour way, as though she hesitated on the edge of saying things which he would not be pleased to hear, or asking questions to which it might not be easy to find reply.

      It was an attitude simple to understand, she thinking him to be what he was, or even something worse, and he having assured her that he was going out to draw money, which he had made no motion to do.

      He could have said that Miss Jones had kindly consented to call at the bank on his behalf, but he doubted the wisdom of that till he knew what the result of her adventure was. But would his silence annoy the woman into denouncing him to the police without waiting for the precarious chance of a reward which must be weighed against the certainty that she was feeding a lodger who did not pay? Would she conclude that his talk of a bank was no more than the ready tale of one who was practised in abusing the confidence of others as his conviction indicated?

      Vexed by these thoughts, to which no satisfactory answers appeared, he did not venture even to look directly at her, lest he should encourage the asking of questions to which he had no reply, and the attitude of dejection and anxiety which she observed actually had a different effect on her mind from that which his fears supposed.

      In fact, her vague horror of criminality, in whatever form, was not entirely proof against actual contact with one who, to the instincts by which those of undeveloped mentality are largely accustomed to rule their lives, did not appear to be of a repellent or hostile type.

      When she did speak, it was only to ask, as she laid for three on the dingy cloth: “I suppose Miss Jones didn’t happen to say whether she’d be coming in? She mostly does, or let’s me know if she won’t.”

      “No,” he said, with some hesitation, wishing neither to show what he knew, nor to be inconsistent with anything that Miss Jones might say on her return, “she might come in any time, as far as I understood.”

      “There’ll be Mr. Rabone, anyway,” the woman went on. “He said he’d be coming in, as he doesn’t do most days, not before-night.” She added, in a grumbling undertone: “I suppose my dinners aren’t good enough for the likes of him.” And then, in a more audible voice, but still in the tone of one who had a developed habit of muttering aloud, rather than conversing with others: “Not as she’d be more likely to come in for that.”

      As she spoke, there was the sound of a latchkey in the street-door, and the heavy step of the top-floor lodger sounded along the passage, and up the thinly-carpeted stairs.

      Francis Hammerton restrained a prudent or cowardly impulse to rise and withdraw to his own room. He had to face the difficulty of securing solitude in a crowded city, which is particularly great for one whose pockets are bare. Two minutes later, the opportunity had gone. William Rabone entered the room.

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