He could only gaze in stupified silence.
"You!" he said wonderingly.
The girl was pale and her eyes never left his face.
She nodded.
"Yes, it is I," she said in a low voice.
"You!" he said again and walked towards her.
He held out his hand and she gave him the wallet without a word.
"Sit down," he said kindly.
He thought she was going to faint.
"I hope I didn't hurt you? I hadn't the slightest idea----"
She shook her head.
"Oh, I'm not hurt," she said wearily, "not hurt in the way you mean."
She drew a chair to the table and dropped her face upon her hands and he stood by, embarrassed, almost terrified, by this unexpected development.
"So you were the visitor on the bicycle," he said at last. "I didn't suspect----"
It struck him at that moment that it was not an offence for Odette Rider to go up to her mother's house on a bicycle, or even to take away a wallet which was probably hers. If there was any crime at all, he had committed it in retaining something to which he had no right. She looked up at his words.
"I? On the bicycle?" she asked. "No, it was not I."
"Not you?"
She shook her head.
"I was in the grounds--I saw you using your lamp and I was quite close to you when you picked up the wallet," she said listlessly, "but I was not on the bicycle."
"Who was it?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"May I have that please?"
She held out her hand and he hesitated.
After all, he had no right or title to this curious purse. He compromised by putting it on the table and she did not attempt to take it.
"Odette," he said gently and walked round to her, laying his hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Tell you what?" she asked, without looking up.
"Tell me all there is to be told," he said. "I could help you. I want to help you."
She looked up at him.
"Why do you want to help me?" she asked simply.
He was tongue-tied for a second.
"Because I love you," he said, and his voice shook.
It did not seem to him that he was talking. The words came of their own volition. He had no more intention of telling her he loved her, indeed he had no more idea that he did love her, than Whiteside would have had. Yet he knew he spoke the truth and that a power greater than he had framed the words and put them on his lips.
The effect on the girl seemed extraordinary to him. She did not shrink back, she did not look surprised. She showed no astonishment whatever. She just brought her eyes back to the table and said: "Oh!"
That calm, almost uncannily calm acceptance of a fact which Tarling had not dared to breathe to himself, was the second shock of the evening.
It was as though she had known it all along. He was on his knees by her side and his arm was about her shoulders, even before his brain had willed the act.
"My girl, my girl," he said gently. "Won't you please tell me?"
Her head was still bent and her voice was so low as to be almost inaudible.
"Tell you what?" she asked.
"What you know of this business," he said. "Don't you realise how every new development brings you more and more under suspicion?"
"What business do you mean?"
He hesitated.
"The murder of Thornton Lyne? I know nothing of that."
She made no response to that tender arm of his, but sat rigid. Something in her attitude chilled him and he dropped her hand and rose. When she looked up she saw that his face was white and set. He walked to the door and unlocked it.
"I'm not going to ask you any more," he said quietly. "You know best why you came to me to-night--I suppose you followed me and took a room. I heard somebody going upstairs soon after I arrived."
She nodded.
"Do you want--this?" she asked and pointed to the wallet on the table.
"Take it away with you."
She got up to her feet unsteadily and swayed toward him. In a second he was by her side, his arms about her. She made no resistance, but rather he felt a yielding towards him which he had missed before. Her pale face was upturned to his and he stooped and kissed her.
"Odette! Odette!" he whispered. "Don't you realise that I love you and would give my life to save you from unhappiness? Won't you............