Part 64

He caught himself comparing her to a statue, forever seated on the low-backed, uncomfortable chair, awaiting without emotion or alteration of feature the outcome of her evil scheming. Her hardness gave him the impression of something hammered on, beaten into an ugly pattern.

Having that imperturbability to overcome, he struck his first blow with surprising directness.

"I'm just back from Pursuit," he said.

That was the first speech by either of them since the monosyllabic greeting at the door. He saw that she had prepared herself for such an announcement; but the way she took it reminded him of a door shaken by the impact of a terrific blow. A little shiver, for all her force of repression, moved her from head to foot.

"You are?" she responded, her voice controlled, the hard face untouched by the shock to which her body had responded.

"Yes; I got back half an hour ago, and, except for one of my assistants, you're the first person I've seen." When that drew no comment from her, he added: "I want you to remember that--later on."

He began to whittle.

"Why?" she asked with genuine curiosity, after a pause.

"Because it may be well for you to know that I'm dealing with you alone, and fairly.--I got all the facts concerning you."

"Concerning me?" Her tone intimated doubt.

"Now, Mrs. Brace!" he exclaimed, disapproving her apparent intention. "You're surely not going to pretend ignorance--or innocence!"

She crossed her knees, and, putting her left forearm across her body, rested her right elbow in that hand. She began to rock very gently, her posture causing her to lean forward and giving her a look of continual but polite questioning.

"If you want to talk to me," she said, her voice free of all feeling, "you'll have to tell me what it's about."

"All right; I will," he returned. "You'll remember, I take it, my asking you to tell me the meaning of the marks on the flap of the grey envelope. I'll admit I was slow, criminally slow, in coming to the conclusion that 'Pursuit!' referred to a place rather than an act. But I got it finally--and I found Pursuit--not much left of it now; it's not even a postoffice.

"But it's discoverable," he continued on a sterner note, and began to shave long, slender chips from his block of wood. "I'll give you the high lights: young Dalton was killed--his murderer made a run for it--but you, a young widow then, in whose presence the thing was done, smoothed matters out. You swore it was a matter of self-defence. The result was that, after a few half-hearted attempts to locate the fugitive, the pursuit was given up."

"Very well. But why bring that story here--now? What's its significance?"

He stared at her in amazement. Her thin, sensitive lips were drawn back at the corners, enough to make her mouth look a trifle wider--and enough to suggest dimly that their motion was the start of a vindictive grimace. Otherwise, she was unmoved, unresponsive to the open threat of what he had said.

"Let me finish," he retorted. "An unfortunate feature, for you, was that you seemed to have made money out of the tragedy. In straitened circumstances previously, you began to spend freely--comparatively speaking--a few days after the murderer's disappearance. In fact, bribery was hinted; you had to leave the village. See any significance in that?" he concluded, with irony.

"Suppose you explain it," she said, still cool.

"The significance is in the strengthening of the theory I've had throughout the whole week that's passed since your daughter was killed at Sloanehurst."

"What's that?"

She stopped rocking; her eyes played a fiery tattoo on every feature of his face.

"Your daughter's death was the unexpected result of your attempts to blackmail young Dalton's murderer. You, being afraid of him, and not confessing that timidity to Mildred, persuaded her to approach him--in person."

"I! Afraid of him!" she objected, aroused at last.

Her brows were lowered, a heavy line above her furtive, swift eyes; her nostrils fluttered nervously.

"Granting your absurd theory," she continued, "why should I have feared him? What had he done--except strike to save his own life?"

"You forget, Mrs. Brace," he corrected. "That body showed twenty-nine wounds, twenty-eight of them unnecessary--if the first was inflicted in mere self-defence. It was horrible mutilation."

"So!" she ridiculed, with obvious effort. "You picture him as a butcher."