Her hand was raised, her whole attitude spoke defiance and—hard as it was for Sweetwater to acknowledge it—truth. He felt that he had received a challenge, and with a quick glance at Knapp, who barely responded by a shrug, he shifted over to the side of Dr. Talbot.
Amabel at once dropped her hand.
"May I go?" she now cried appealingly to Mr. Courtney. "I really have no more to say, and I am tired."
"Did you see the figure of the man who brushed by you in the wood? Was it that of the old man you saw on the doorstep?"
At this direct question Frederick quivered in spite of his dogged self-control. But she, with her face upturned to meet the scrutiny of the speaker, showed only a childish kind of wonder. "Why do you ask that? Is there any doubt about its being the same?"
What an actress she was! Frederick stood appalled. He had been amazed at the skill with which she had manipulated her story so as to keep her promise to him, and yet leave the way open for that further confession which would alter the whole into a denunciation of himself which he would find it difficult, if not impossible, to meet. But this extreme dissimulation made him lose heart. It showed her to be an antagonist of almost illimitable resource and secret determination.
"I did not suppose there could be any doubt," she added, in such a
natural tone of surprise that Mr. Courtney dropped the subject, and Dr.
Talbot turned to Sweetwater, who for the moment seemed to have robbed
Knapp of his rightful place as the coroner's confidant.
"Shall we let her go for the present?" he whispered. "She does look tired, poor girl."
The public challenge which Sweetwater had received made him wary, and his reply was a guarded one:
"I do not trust her, yet there is much to confirm her story. Those sandwiches, now. She says she dropped them in Mrs. Webb's yard under the pear tree, and that the bag that held them burst open. Gentlemen, the birds were so busy there on the morning after the murder that I could not but notice them, notwithstanding my absorption in greater matters. I remember wondering what they were all pecking at so eagerly. But how about the flower whose presence on the scene of guilt she challenges me to explain? And the money so deftly reburied by her? Can any explanation make her other than accessory to a crime on whose fruits she lays her hand in a way tending solely to concealment? No, sirs; and so I shall not relax my vigilance over her, even if, in order to be faithful to it, I have to suggest that a warrant be made out for her imprisonment."