He mercifully spoke to the point.
"Yes, under arrest. You see he was in the house at or near the time the deadly blow was struck. He was in the front hall, he says, and nowhere near the woman or her unknown assailant, but there is no evidence against any one else, and the facts so far proved, show he had an interest in her death, and so he has to pay the penalty of circumstances. And he may be guilty, who knows," the young detective pursued, seeing she was struck with horror and dismay, "dreadful as it is to imagine that a gentleman of culture and breeding could be brought to commit such a deed."
But she seemed to have ears for but one phrase of all this.
"He was in the front hall," she repeated. "How did he get there? What called him there?"
"He had been visiting the widow, and was on his way out. He paused to collect his thoughts, he said. It seems unaccountable, Miss Dare; but the whole thing is strange and very mysterious."
She was deaf to his explanations.
"Do you suppose he heard the widow scream?" she asked, tremblingly, "or——"
A sinking of the ringing tones whose powerful vibration had made this conversation possible, caused her to pause. When the notes grew loud enough again for her to proceed, she seemed to have forgotten the question she was about to propound, and simply inquired:
"Had he any thing to say about what he overheard—or saw?"
"No. If he spoke the truth and stood in the hall as he said, the sounds, if sounds there were, stopped short of the sitting-room door, for he has nothing to say about them."