"Now," she answered instantly. "Now!--Now!--Oh, don't look surprised.

I've thought of this possibility. My G.o.d!" she said with a bitterness that startled him. "I've thought of every possibility, every possible crook and quirk of this business."

She was struck by his slowness in responding to her offer.

"But you," she asked; "are you sure--have you the proof?"

"Thanks," he said drily. "You needn't be uneasy about that.--Now, if I may do a little telephoning, we'll start."

He went a step from her and turned back.

"By the way," he stipulated, "that little matter of the five hundred--you needn't refer to it. I mean it will have to be left out.

It's not necessary."

"No; it isn't," she agreed, with perfect indifference. "And it's spent."

When he had telephoned to Sloanehurst and the sheriff's office, he found her with her hat on, ready to accompany him.

As they stepped out of the Walman, she saw the automobile waiting for them. She stopped, a new rage darting from her eyes. He thought she would go back. After a brief hesitation, however, she gave a short, ugly laugh.

"You were as sure as that, were you!" she belittled herself. "Had the car wait--to take me there!"

"By no means," he denied. "I hoped you'd go--that's all."

"That's better," she said, determined to a.s.sert her individuality of action. "You're not forcing me into this, you know. I'm doing it, after thinking it out to the last detail--for my own satisfaction."

XX

DENIAL OF THE CHARGE

Hastings, fully appreciating the value of surprise, had instructed Mrs.

Brace to communicate none of the new developments to anybody until he asked for them. Reaching Sloanehurst, he went alone to the library, leaving her in the parlour to battle as best she might with the sheriff's anxious curiosity.

Arthur Sloane and Judge Wilton gave him cool welcome, parading for his benefit an obvious and insolent boredom. Although uninvited to sit down, he caught up a chair and swung it lightly into such position that, when he seated himself, he faced them across the table. He was smiling, enough to indicate a general satisfaction with the world.

There was in his bearing, however, that which carried them back to their midnight session with him immediately following the discovery of Mildred Brace's body. The smile did not lessen his look of unquestionable power; his words were sharp, clipped-off.

"I take it," he said briskly, untouched by their demeanour of indifference, "you gentlemen will be interested in the fact that I've cleared up this mystery."

"Ah-h-h!" drawled Sloane. "Again?"

"What do you mean by 'again'?" he asked, good-naturedly.

"Crown, the sheriff, accomplished it four days ago, I'm credibly informed."

"He made a mistake."

"Ah?" Sloane ridiculed.

"Yes. 'Ah!'" Hastings took him up curtly, and, with a quick turn of his head, addressed himself to Wilton: "Judge, I've been to Pursuit."

When he said that, his head was thrown back so that he squinted at Wilton down the line of his nose, under the rims of his spectacles.

"Pursuit!"

Wilton's echo of the word was explosive. He had been leaning back in his chair, eying the detective from under lowered lids, and drawing deep, prolonged puffs from his cigar. But, with the response to Hastings'

announcement, he sat up and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the rim of the table. It was an awkward att.i.tude, compelling him to extend his neck and turn his face upward in order to meet the other's glance.

"Yes," Hastings said, after a measurable pause. "Interested in that?"

"Not at all," Wilton replied, plainly alarmed, and fubbed out his cigar with forefinger and thumb, oblivious to the fact that he dropped a little shower of fire on the table cover.

"I'll trouble you to observe, Mr. Sloane," Hastings put in, "that, being excited, the judge's first impulse is to extinguish his cigar: it's a habit of his.--Now, judge, in Pursuit I heard a lot about you--a lot."

"All right--what?"

He made the inquiry reluctantly, as if under compulsion of the detective's glance.

"The Dalton case--and your part in it."

"You know about that, do you?"

"All about it," Hastings said, in a way that made doubt impossible; Sloane, even, bewildered as he was, got the impression of his ruthless certainty.

Wilton did not contest it.

"I struck in self-defence," he excused himself wearily, like a man taking up a task against his will. "It would be ridiculous to call that murder. No jury would have convicted me--none would now, if given the truth."

"But the body showed twenty-nine wounds," Hastings pressed him, "the marks of twenty-nine separate thrusts of that knife."

"Yes; that's true.--Yes, I'll tell you about that, you and Arthur--if you'd care to hear?"

"That's what I'm here for," Hastings said, settling in his chair. He was thinking: "He didn't expect this. He's unprepared!"

Sloane, who had been on the point of resenting this unbelievable attack on his friend, was struck dumb by Wilton's calm acknowledgment of the charge. From long habit, he took the cap off the smelling-salts with which he had been toying when Hastings came in, but his shaking hand could not lift the bottle to his nose. Wilton guilty of a murder, years ago! He drew a long, shuddering breath and huddled in his chair.

Wilton rose clumsily and walked heavily to the door opening into the hall. He put his hand on the k.n.o.b but did not turn it. He repeated the performance at the door opening into Sloane's room. In all this he was unconscionably slow, moving in the manner of a blind man, feeling his way about and fumbling both k.n.o.bs.

When he came back to the table, his shoulders were hunched to the front and downward, crowding his chest. His face looked larger, each separate feature of it throbbing coa.r.s.ely to the pumping of his heart. Pink threads stood out on the white of his eyeb.a.l.l.s. When the back of his neck pressed against his collar, the effect was to give the lower half of the back of his head an odd appearance of inflation or puffiness.

Hastings had never seen a man struggle so to contain himself.

"Suffering angels!" Sloane sympathized shrilly. "What's the matter, Tom?"

"All right--it's all right," he a.s.sured, his voice still low, but so resonant and harsh that it sounded like the thrumming of a viol string.