Free Hue and Cry by Patricia Wentworth Page B

threatening manner.
    â€œWhat have you done with the paper? Where is it?”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean.”
    â€œOh, don’t you? You’d better think, Miss Mally Lee, or you’ll find yourself in Queer Street. Why, you little fool, what’s going to save you from going to prison? Nothing, if you persist in being obstinate.”
    Mally stood her ground, looked straight up into the furious face, and said in a small, cool voice, “How did Mrs. Craddock’s pendant get into the hem of my skirt?”
    â€œI think a jury would say that you had hid it there.”
    â€œI wonder.”
    â€œAre you going to give me the paper?”
    â€œI don’t know anything at all about any paper.”
    â€œYou took a paper off Mr. Craddock’s table this morning. I want it. If you give it up, I won’t prosecute.”
    A little spurt of anger warmed Mally and loosened her tongue.
    â€œThat’s frightfully kind of you. Do I say ‘Thank you very much’?”
    Sir George set his jaw.
    â€œYou give me the paper, or you go to jail.”
    Mally stepped back from him with a little laugh. Now that she was angry, she could laugh.
    â€œHow can I give you what I haven’t got?”
    â€œWhere is it? What have you done with it?”
    â€œHow do I know?” She laughed again. “I think you know more about the diamond than I do, and about this stupid paper which seems to upset you so much.”
    As soon as she had said the words, she felt a stab of fear. Sir George’s face changed; there was a black, bleak silence. After a moment he turned stiffly and went to the window. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and there was a touch of dusk upon the January air. The fire had gone out because no one had thought to make it up.
    After the silence had lasted an interminable time, Sir George came away from the window and switched on the light. Then he called in a loud, harsh voice to Paul Craddock.

CHAPTER XI
    Mally sat on a hard chair in a small bedroom high up on the fourth floor of the big hostile house. A single unshaded electric light showed a neat hard bed, the square of Turkey carpet, and furniture painted white.
    She had just decided to her own satisfaction that the carpet must belong to Mrs. Craddock and had graced her dining-room; it was so exactly the sort of carpet that Mrs. Craddock would have in a dining-room. The furniture was probably Mrs. Craddock’s, too—the furniture of a servant’s bedroom, not considered good enough for Jones’s use. That nobody used this room was plain enough; it had the neat, cold, unlived-in feeling which clings about empty houses. It was an hour since the door had been locked on Mally, and two hours since Sir George had called to Paul Craddock. Mally had never heard of the third degree, but she had been put through it with merciless efficiency. The fact that she had no knowledge of the missing paper helped her to weather the long, battering cross-examination to which she had been subjected. In the end it was Sir George who lost his self-control, suddenly, terribly, shockingly, and Paul Craddock who had stood between her and actual physical violence. It was Paul who had marched her upstairs, told her to take the night to think it over, and locked her in.
    Mally got up from her chair, went to the window, and pulled up the blind. She looked out over the square, with its soft central darkness of trees to the rows of lighted windows that marked the houses square, with its soft central darkness of trees, to the left of the hall door. The light made an odd, shiny circle on the wet road and damp pavement. The far edge of the circle touched the iron railings which shut in the garden, where the trees and shrubs lived like prisoners behind bars.
    Mally looked at the railings and began to wonder what being in prison was like. She would soon know, because she did not see how there could be any way out of her