BOOK IV
NEMESIS
XXVII
FROM LIPS LONG SILENT
"This finishes my usefulness as a detective. I have had my fill of horrors; all, in fact, that my old age can stand."
Thus, Mr. Gryce, as hours afterward he and Sweetwater turned their faces back toward New York.
"I appreciate your feelings," responded the latter, who had been strangely silent all day, speaking only when directly addressed. "I can assure you that in my way I'm as much cut up as you are. I wish now that I had made an attempt from the rear to head off this distracted woman, even if I had been obliged to scratch my hands to pieces tearing a board from the fence."
"It would have done no good. She was determined to die rather than give up her secret. I remember the look with which her sister-in-law warned me that she would never survive a capture. But I thought that mere exaggeration."