herself when he first saw her. Now those passionate tears of hers
seemed to him like remorse.

"I'll leave her where she is," he decided again. "I can't help it;
I mustn't run any risks. My first duty is to get the police here and
have Deede Dawson arrested."

He went down the stairs still deep in thought, and when he reached
the landing below he would not even go to make sure that his captive
was still secure.

An obscure feeling that he did not wish to see her, and still more
that he did not wish her to see him, prevented him.

He descended the second flight of steps to the hall, taking fewer
precautions to avoid making a noise and still very deep in thought.

For some time he had had but little hope that young Charley Wright
still lived.

Nevertheless, the dreadful discovery he had made in the attic above
had affected him profoundly, and left his mind in a chaos of
emotions so that he was for the time much less acutely watchful than
usual.

They had spent their boyhood together, and he remembered a thousand
incidents of their childhood. They had been at school and college
together. And how brilliantly Charley had always done at work and
play, surmounting every difficulty with a laugh, as if it were merely
some new and specially amusing jest!