“Some boy. Probably a messenger picked up in the street. Of course I went to the station at once, but could see no sign of you, nor of anyone that I knew till the train was about to start. That was just a little before you came. Then suddenly Larry Hughes was beside me. I was startled, of course, but the audacity of the thing somehow prevented any sense of alarm for the instant.

“ ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘You are looking for Labar?’

“ ‘What are you doing here?’ I cried. ‘Where is Mr. Labar?’ I was so worried about you that I was unable to think clearly.

“ ‘I am on parole till the train starts,’ he declared. ‘You will be pleased to learn that I have surrendered, that I am a prisoner.’ ”

Labar interrupted her story. “My dear child. Don’t tell me that you were ingenuous enough to swallow that⁠—to believe that I would let a prisoner⁠—especially Larry⁠—move about on his own?”