“I offer you all that you require to get out of this country and to keep you out for a few years, until this old Frog busts—as he will bust! I’ve been watching you for a long time, and, if you won’t consider it an impertinence, I like you. There’s something about you that is very attractive—don’t stop me, because I’m not going to get fresh with you, or suggest that you’re the only girl that ever made tobacco taste like molasses—I like you in a kind of pitying way, and you needn’t get offended at that either. And I don’t want to see you hurt.” He was very serious; she recognized his sincerity, and the word of sarcasm that rose to her lips remained unuttered. “Are you wholly disinterested?” she asked. “So far as you are concerned, I am,” he replied. “There is going to be an almighty smash, and it is more than likely that you’ll get in the way of some of the flying pieces.” She did not answer him at once. What he had said merely intensified her own uneasiness. “I suppose you know I’m married?” “I guessed that,” he answered. “Take your husband with you. What are you going to do with that boy?” “You mean Ray Bennett?” It was curious that she made no attempt to disguise either her position or the part that she was playing. She wondered at herself after she was home. But Joshua Broad had a compelling way, and she never dreamt of deceiving him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wish he wasn’t in it. He is on my conscience. Are you smiling?” “At your having a conscience? No, I fancied that was how you stood. And the growing beard?” She did not laugh. “I don’t know about that. All I know is that we’ve had—why am I telling you this? Who are you, Mr. Broad?” He chuckled. “Some day I’ll tell you,” he said; “and I promise you that, if you’re handy, you shall be the first to know. Go easy with that boy, Lola.” She did not resent the employment of her first name, but rather it warmed her towards this mystery man. “And write to Mr. Bron, Assistant Chief Warder of Pentonville Gaol, and tell him that you’ve been called out of town and won’t be able to see him again for ten years.” To this she made no rejoinder. He left her at the door of her flat and took her little hand in his. “If you want money to get away, I’ll send you a blank cheque,” he said. “There is no one else on the face of the earth that I’d give a blank cheque to, believe me.” She nodded, most unusual tears in her eyes. Lola was breaking under the strain, and nobody knew it better than the hawk-faced man who watched her as she passed into her flat. CHAPTER XXVIII MURDER