The Borough Treasurer quotes

Halfway along the north side of the main street of Highmarket an ancient stone gateway, imposing enough to suggest that it was originally the entrance to some castellated mansion or manor house, gave access to a square yard, flanked about by equally ancient buildings.

What those buildings had been used for in other days was not obvious to the casual and careless observer, but to the least observant their present use was obvious enough. Here were piles of timber from Norway; there were stacks of slate from Wales;

“Name nothing, till you’ve told Mallalieu,” answered Kitely. “There’s no hurry. You two can’t, and I shan’t, run away.

Time enough⁠—I’ve the whip hand.

Tell your partner, the Mayor, all I’ve told you—then you can put your heads together, and see what you’re inclined to do. An annuity, now?—that would suit me.”

“Mostly instinct, anyhow,” she answered. “

Women have a sort of feeling about things that men haven’t⁠—leastways, no men that I’ve ever met had it.

But of course, I’d more than that. Mr. Kitely, now, he was a townsman—a London man. I’m a countrywoman. He didn’t understand—you couldn’t get him to understand—that it’s not safe to go walking in lonely places in country districts like this late at night.

For

Brereton knew that nothing is so useful in the breaking-down of one prejudice as to set up another

, and his great object just then was to divert primary prejudice away from his client. Nevertheless, nothing, he knew well, could at that stage prevent Harborough’s ultimate committal—unless Harborough himself chose to prove the alibi of which he had boasted.

“Aye, sir!” he answered. “The best suggestion you could get.

If you want to find out who killed Kitely⁠—go back! Go back, sir⁠—go inch by inch, through Kitely’s life!

”

“Not he!

He was a regular old steel trap, Kitely was⁠—shut tight!

” said Pett.

“Unless I’m obliged to,” answered Mallalieu. “I should have to make it clear that I’d naught to do with that particular matter, d’ye see?

Every man for himself’s a sound principle.

But—I see no need. I don’t believe there’ll be any need. And it doesn’t matter the value of that pen that’s shaking so in your hand to me if an innocent man suffers—if he’s innocent o’ that, he’s guilty o’ something else.

Mrs. Hamthwaite clapped him on the shoulder as she opened the door for her visitors.

“Find that tall man in the grey clothes!” she said. “Get hold of him! He’s the chap you want!”

Brereton went silently away, meditating on the old woman’s last words.

“You were there, then?” asked Mallalieu. “Lot o’ stuff and nonsense! A sensible woman like you—”

“A sensible woman like me only believes what she can prove,” answered Miss Pett.

She went away and shut the door, and Mallalieu, left to himself, took another heartening pull at his glass and proceeded to re-inspect his quarters. The fire was blazing up: the room was warm and comfortable; certainly he was fortunate.

“I think we shall be equal to it—between us,” answered Miss Pett drily.

“Them big, flabby men’s easy frightened.”

Mallalieu was certainly frightened when he woke suddenly next morning to find Miss Pett standing at the side of his bed. He glared at her for one instant of wild alarm and started up on his pillows.

“So that’s the line you’re taking?” said Tallington quietly. “A good one—for him.”

“Every man for himself,” remarked the Norcaster practitioner.

“We’re not concerned with Mallalieu—we’re concerned about ourselves. See you when Cotherstone’s brought before your worthies next Tuesday. And—a word in your ear!—it won’t be a long job, then.”

After that followed a silence so deep that Mallalieu felt the drums of his ears aching intensely in the effort to catch any sound, however small. But he heard nothing—not even a sigh.

It was as if all the awful silences that had ever been in the cavernous places of the world had been crystallized into one terrible silence and put into that room.

He reached out at last and found his candle and the matches, and he got more light and leaned forward in the bed, looking.