THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN
you to forgive me. I am saying I have stopped. That is all—stopped, do you understand me? I should have stopped when Jason commissioned me to kill your son. I should have, if this affair with France was not beginning. Even then the business sickened me. What did I care about the money he stole from her? I did not want her money. What did I care if the boy suspected you had not stolen it, but that Jason had it all the time? I couldn't have killed him, because he had some slight glimmerings of sense."
A dozen dim suspicions clashed suddenly together into fact. I looked sharply at my father. He was nodding, with some faint suspicion of amusement.
"And so you did not," he said gently. "Your scruples do you credit, after all."
"I was just as well," said Mr. Lawton. "I thought the news your son was attacked would fetch you over. Jason did his best to hush it up, but I knew you would suspect. And you know what it would have meant to me if I could have sent you back to France."
And yet, for some reason, my father was strangely ill at ease. Like someone detected in a falsehood, he looked restlessly about
[247]
