"You will have an opportunity, Sophie," he said, "to think up another
story. You are clever--it will not be hard."
She gave him a black look and went out. Bray got up from his desk. He
and Colonel Hughes stood facing each other across a table, and to
me there was something in the manner of each that suggested eternal
conflict.
"Well?" sneered Bray.
"There is one possibility we have overlooked," Hughes answered. He
turned toward me and I was startled by the coldness in his eyes. "Do you
know, Inspector," he went on, "that this American came to London with
a letter of introduction to the captain--a letter from the captain's
cousin, one Archibald Enwright? And do you know that Fraser-Freer had no
cousin of that name?"
"No!" said Bray.
"It happens to be the truth," said Hughes. "The American has confessed
as much to me."
"Then," said Bray to me, and his little blinking eyes were on me with
a narrow calculating glance that sent the shivers up and down my spine,
"you are under arrest. I have exempted you so far because of your friend
at the United States Consulate. That exemption ends now."
I was thunderstruck. I turned to the colonel, the man who had suggested
that I seek him out if I needed a friend--the man I had looked to to
save me from just such a contingency as this. But his eyes were quite
fishy and unsympathetic.
"Quite correct, Inspector," he said. "Lock him up!" And as I began
to protest he passed very close to me and spoke in a low voice: "Say
nothing. Wait!"
I pleaded to be allowed to go back to my rooms, to communicate with my
friends, and pay a visit to our consulate and to the Embassy; and at the
colonel's suggestion Bray agreed to this somewhat irregular course. So
this afternoon I have been abroad with a constable, and while I wrote
this long letter to you he has been fidgeting in my easy chair. Now he
informs me that his patience is exhausted and that I must go at once. So
there is no time to wonder; no time to speculate as to the future, as to
the colonel's sudden turn against me or the promise of his whisper in my
ear. I shall, no doubt, spend the night behind those hideous, forbidding
walls that your guide has pointed out to you as New Scotland Yard. And
when I shall write again, when I shall end this series of letters so
filled with-The constable will not wait. He is as impatient as a child. Surely he is
lying when he says I have kept him here an hour.