“I can’t tell you what he knows, but what he asserted that he knew was that you had committed forgery, and that you tried first to bribe him, and then to knock him out. The case as he presented it was pretty ugly. There was only one thing left for me to do as a friend of yours. That was to get you out of the way.”

Penelope’s face darkened as she listened. Was Labar trying some subtle underhand game of bluff? If he had thus lied about her to Hughes, might he not equally have lied to her when he declared that Larry Hughes was a criminal? What could he hope to gain by it? Her hands opened and closed nervously as she considered. Had she misjudged Hughes merely on the strength of this man’s word whom she had only met yesterday?

“That is a string of lies,” she said scornfully.