"And let a policeman pick you up!" The boy glanced at the corporal's empty holster, and shook his head in mystification. "I don't see how you ever let him do it. He hasn't any gun of his own, and yet he got the best of you—took your revolver from you?"
"My revolver?" she echoed.
"Yes—yours—the one he just stuck on me. How'd you ever allow him to get his hands on it?"
Dexter threw up his head with a start. "Is this your sister's revolver?" he asked after a trenchant interval. He reached into his pocket again and exhibited the weapon on the palm of his hand.
"Certainly," Preston replied without hesitation. "There's that scratch in the silver plate on the barrel. It's hers."
A look of infinite sadness passed over Dexter's face as he turned to confront the girl. "You admit this is yours?" he asked somberly.
"Admit it?" she faltered. "Why, what—?"
"Do you know where I found it?" he cut in before she could finish.
She faced him with widening eyes, but did not reply.
"On the floor of the cabin where the two murders were done—that night, when I found you there," he stated in low, incisive tones. "Here is the revolver, exactly as I picked it up, with the cases of two discharged cartridges still left in the chamber. The bullets from those cartridges were the bullets that killed the two men in the bunks."