Below Suspicion Read Online Free Page A

Not bad, eh?" His personality enveloped and smothered her words like a feather-bed. "Good-bye, my dear! Keep your courage up!"
    "Mr. Butler, please listen! It isn't that I mind telling lies. It's only that. . . ."
    But Joyce saw, with a feeling of being trapped afresh, that the matron was already in the room. A blue-clad male warder, his footsteps echoing in the passage, appeared to escort the visitor out.
    Five minutes later, when Joyce was weeping hysterically in her cell, Patrick Butler emerged from Holloway Prison a good deal pleased with himself. The sleek dark hmousine stood a little way off. Johnson, Butler's chauffeur, climbed out to open the door for him. And in the back seat, on a wire of nerves, was Old Charlie Denham.
    "Well?" demanded the solicitor.
    "All W'Cll, me bhoy. And I want a drink. Johnson, drive to the Garrick Club!"
    "Wait!" said Denham. He made so imperious a gesture that the chauffeur's hand dropped from the starter. Then Denham switched on the interior light, so that he could see his companion's face.
    'Old Charlie' Denham was about thirty-two. He was a lean, strong-built young man whose sombre bowler hat, sombre overcoat, hard collar and colourless tie were as professionally correct as the man himself. But he had never been so sombre as he appeared tonight.
    Under a moonlight glow from the roof of the limousine, which shut them into grey-cushioned luxur)' with the dark and cold outside, there were shadow-hollows under Denham's cheek-bones. He wore a thin dark line of moustache, under idealistic eyes and dark eyebrows.
    "Well?" he demanded again. "What did you think of her?"
    Butler considered this.
    "Not my type," he answered amiably. "But very attractive, I admit. Exudes an aura of sex."
    Muscles worked down Charles Denham's jaws. He looked at Butler as though his question had been answered by a bawdy joke.
    "Pat," Denham said slowly. "I think you seriously believe that three-quarters of the women in this world are preoccupied with nothing but sex."
    "Oh, I shouldn't say exactly that." The barrister's grin implied that he meant nine-tenths of them,
    "I suppose it's because that's the only sort of woman who ever gravitates towards you."
    "Well," said Butler, "she gravitated towards me. Very definitely."
    "That's a lie! I don't believe it!"
    "A-a-isy, me son!" exclaimed Butler, genuinely surprised. He studied the other man. "Smitten yourself, are you?"
    "No. Not exactly. That is. . . ."
    "Now the divil bum ye for an old rake!" suggested Butler amiably. His tone changed. "I knew you were old Mrs. Taylor's solicitor, Charlie. But I was wondering why you were so much concerned with the Ellis girl."
    "Because she's innocent, that's why! You believe she's innocent, don't you?"
    Butler hesitated before replying. These two had been friends for several years; but you could never tell about Old Charlie and his British ideals and his infernal conscience.
    "Do you want an honest answer to that," he asked, "or do you want the usual fine pretence between solicitor and barrister?"
    "I want an honest answer, of course!"
    "She's as guilty as hell," smiled Butler. "But don't worry, Charlie. I prefer to have my clients guilty."
    For a moment Denham did not comment. He lowered his head and looked at the tips of his well-polished shoes. A thin wind whistled round the car, making the chauffeur beyond the glass panel pull up the collar of his coat.
    "What makes you think J—Miss Ellis is guilty?" Denham asked.
    "Partly evidence, but mainly atmospheres. I can always tell by atmospheres."
    "Can you? What if you happen to be wrong?"
    "I am never wrong."
    Denham had heard this remark before. Sometimes it maddened him almost to committing what his precise mind called assault and battery. He was losing his sense of judgment and had already lost his sense of humour; nevertheless he was goaded into giving battle.
    "Sol" Denham said, and raised his head. "You prefer to have your clients guilty?"
    "Naturally!" said Butler, raising