He looked straight into the passionless eyes. “And yet you must know so much more than I do. Here, in this room, the voice of a dead man is sounding now, asking for vengeance. There are other voices, we have both heard them, but this is the clearest. Here your master died, and the evil thing triumphed, and you told me that fear came before he died, the fear that is worse than death. Can’t you hear that voice?”
The blank-faced woman shivered as he spoke, and Derrick knew that the truth had crept a little, a very little nearer than ever before. There was mystery in the study, but the greatest mystery of all was locked within this unresponsive breast. There was some chord which, if he could only touch it, would vibrate in unison with her guarded secret and unloose its bonds. Perkins trembled again and waited.
“He was good to you, as everyone has told me,” went on the steady voice, “and it seems that you were devoted to him. For six years you had his confidence and lived under this roof. I do not know what may have taken place before that, if anything, but is six years forgotten so soon?”
“Don’t!” she said brokenly. “Don’t!”
“Two men are coming here in a few moments,” he persisted. “Of one of them I know little, and nothing of the other. But I am assured that in the peddler’s heart are things at which I have not guessed. He, too, has his secret, or he would not be here. He poses as a stranger, but something tells me that he is no stranger to Martin, and perhaps not to you.”
“Why do you say that?” she flashed.
“It matters not why, but I have my reasons. It may be that there are now assembled all those who were here two years ago, and the Millicents are not far away. One of these men was in the grounds of Beech Lodge when its master met his death, Perkins; was the other here, too?”
He shot out these last words in a tone so sharp and commanding that the woman quailed visibly. Her fascinated eyes were fixed on him in a stare that began to be strangely hypnotic, till it seemed that she was receding visibly from his reach, dwindling to a distance, and leaving behind her only a baffling intelligence that mocked and dared him to follow if he could. She had recoiled, but with her secret locked tighter than ever. He became aware that fear, though fear was in her every motion, could not conquer her. She relied apparently on powers that from long use had become stronger than fear. When at last she spoke, it was as though a safe distance had been established and her spirit had caught its breath again. She seemed now safe from further probing.
“I have told you already what happened that night, how I found the master”—here she hesitated a little—“and then went for Martin. There was no one at the cottage but him. There is nothing else to be said.”
“And Blunt,” he said again. “The man who will be here in a few minutes, the man who is so anxious to enter this room, has he never been here before?”