Sensation enough among the others; but I doubt if he even heard me. His gaze had found Barbara; all the bounce, all the jauntiness was out of the man, as he stared with the same haunted fear his eyes had held when she concentrated last night at his own dinner table.
She was concentrating now; could she stand the strain of it, with its weakening of the heart action, its pumping all the blood to the brain? I shouldered my way to her, and knelt beside her, begging,
"Don't, Barbara. Give it up, girl. You can't stand this."
Her hands unclasped. Her eyes grew normal. She relaxed, sighingly. I leaned closer while she whispered to me the last addition in that problem of two and two—the full solution. Armed, I faced Vandeman once more.
Something seemed to be giving way in the man; his lips were almost as pale as his face, and that had been, from the moment he uncovered it, like tallow. He looked withered, smaller; his hair where it had been pressed down by mask and cap, crossed his forehead, flat, smooth, dull brown. I saw, half consciously, that Fong Ling was gone. An accomplice? No matter; the criminal himself was here—Barbara's wonder man. It was to him I spoke.
"Edward Clayte," at the name, Cummings clanked around front to stare. "I hold a warrant for your arrest for the theft of nine hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars from the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank of San Francisco."
He made a sick effort to square his shoulders; fumbled with his hair to toss it back from its straight-down sleekness, as Clayte, to the pompadoured crest of Vandeman. How often I had seen that gesture, not understanding its significance. Cummings, at my side, drew in a breath, with,
"Why—damn it!—he is Clayte!"
"All right," I let the words go from the corner of my mouth at the lawyer, in the same hushed tones he'd used. "See how you like this next one," and finished, loud enough so all might hear,
"And I charge you, Edward Clayte—Bronson Vandeman—with the murder of Thomas Gilbert."