“And you can think of nothing, absolutely nothing, which will give us any clue as to an enmity for one or both of these two men?”
“The Amalgamated Silk Society—but that sounds too silly to suggest,” she said hesitatingly.
“I don't know about silly, but as they wanted both men for embezzlement I can't see the point in killing one. And Miss West, you can't separate one man in this case from the other, since Carter won't speak out. It is the charge of killing Erskine that's Carter's danger. Now suppose you tell me more about Carter. We have been told by the authorities in Toronto that even though he was Erskine's assistant he would absent himself from the town and the works for months at a time. Can you guess why?”
“Rob said he was prospecting.”
“And what did he himself say?”
“He refused to talk of where he had been.”
“Miss West, why don't you believe that he really had been prospecting?”
For an appreciable second she hesitated, then with a lift of her head she looked up at him.
“I'll be quite frank. I know the truth can only help Jack in the end. He never came back looking in the least as a prospector does after a trip. Face and hands burnt and cracked. Hair all rough, and a gait that doesn't lose its stiffness for weeks. There's an unmistakable look about a man who's been away in the wilds that you can't mistake out there. But Jack always came back paler than he went, and with his hands not sunburnt in the least. Nor has he ever been able to walk much since the war. It was his leg that was so mangled.”
Pointer thought of “Green's” New York record.