“You believe, then, that your dream foreshadowed the manner of the murder as well as the fact?”
“I do.”
“It is a pity it did not go a little further, then, and tell us how the assassin escaped from, if not how he entered, a house so securely fastened.”
His face flushed. “That would have been convenient,” he repeated. “Also, if I had been informed where Hannah was, and why a stranger and a gentleman should have stooped to the committal of such a crime.”
Seeing that he was nettled, I dropped my bantering vein. “Why do you say a stranger?” I asked; “are you so well acquainted with all who visit that house as to be able to say who are and who are not strangers to the family?
“I am well acquainted with the faces of their friends, and Henry Clavering is not amongst the number; but——”
“Were you ever with Mr. Leavenworth,” I interrupted, “when he has been away from home; in the country, for instance, or upon his travels?”
“No.” But the negative came with some constraint.
“Yet I suppose he was in the habit of absenting himself from home?”
“Certainly.”