Who Pays the Piper? by Patricia Wentworth Page B

had not uttered a word. Susan dared not stay. She got to her feet, pulled back the curtain which screened the recess, and saw with relief that Dale had not left the study. He was standing by the hearth, his elbow on the chimney ledge, looking down into the fire. As the curtain slid back he turned, waiting for her. She came slowly to stand beside him and say in a faltering voice,
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    â€œThat’s for you to say, Susan.”
    She looked at the burning logs.
    â€œThat is very kind—very generous. I—I don’t know what to say. She’s ill. There must be some dreadful mistake, or else she didn’t know what she was doing. Cathy couldn’t do anything like that if she was herself—you must know that.”
    Lucas Dale said, choosing his words,
    â€œThat would be taken into consideration in preparing her defence.”
    Her head came up. She said,
    â€œWhat are you saying? What are you going to do?”
    He was looking at her gravely and sternly.
    â€œDo you really expect me not to prosecute?”
    â€œMr. Dale!”
    â€œYou must forgive me if I don’t look at it quite as you do. It’s a pretty bad case, you know. She was in a position of trust, and I did trust her implicitly. She has abused that trust in the most flagrant way. The whole thing seems to me to have been quite cleverly calculated. Don’t look like that, Susan—I am bound to let you see my point of view. It’s not only the loss of the pearls, but it was just an outside chance my looking at them again like that. It might have been six months before I had them out—or longer. And who would have fallen under suspicion then? Monty Phipson, or Raby, or one of the servants. I’m not a suspicious man. After months had passed I couldn’t say or swear that my keys had never been left about, or that I hadn’t let Monty have them to fetch something from the safe. The last person on earth to be suspected would be Miss Cathleen O’Hara, and that’s what she was counting on. How can you expect me just to pass it over and let her go to play the same kind of trick on someone else? If you’re kind to a criminal you may be letting a lot of other people down, and the way the law looks at it, you would be compounding a felony.”
    â€œYou said——”
    â€œI gave her a chance before you found the pearls. If she’d owned up then and given them back, I could have believed she had given way to some sudden temptation and been sorry for it ever since. But you saw how it was—she thought she could get away with it. They were cleverly hidden, and she held right on. Well, there it is—she made her choice. And that was the last minute I was going to feel justified in letting her go.”
    Susan watched his face, and found no comfort there. He had the look of a man who has made up his mind. There was no anger—she would have had more hope if he had been angry. There was a settled purpose, and that purpose to—send—Cathy—to—prison.… Her lips moved very stiffly.
    â€œYou said it was for me to say——”
    Dale said, “Yes.”
    He turned from her abruptly and went to the glass door by which she had come in. He opened it and stood there, letting the wind blow through. There was a streak of sun between grey clouds. There was a yellow crocus out below the window. He shut the door and came back.
    â€œYes, it’s for you to say, Susan. I’ve got a duty to society, and a duty to the law, and a duty, as I feel it, to the other members of my household. But there’s a duty that one puts before all these. It may be right or it may be wrong, but there it is. It’s nature, and you can’t go against nature. If a thing like this happens in a man’s own family, he’s got a right to keep it in the family, and no one can blame him. I shouldn’t prosecute my wife’s