“My cousin, Edgar, came to my door in a state of extreme agitation. He had been told that I was ill. I was not; but say that I had been, I do not see why he should have been so affected by the news. I am a trial to him; an incubus; a rival whom he must hate. Why should he shiver at sight of me and whirl away to his room?”
“It was odd. You had heard nothing previously, then?”
“No, I was fortunate enough to be asleep.”
“And this being a silent drama you did not wake.”
“Not till the time I said.”
He was very slow, and I very eager, but I restrained myself. The peculiarity observable in his manner had increased rather than diminished. He seemed on fire to speak, yet unaccountably hesitated, turning away from my direct gaze and busying himself with some little thing on his desk. I began to feel hesitant also and inclined to shirk the interview.
And now for a confession. There was something in my own mind which I had refused to bare even to my own perceptions. Something from which I shrank and yet which would obtrude itself at moments like these. Could it be that I was about to hear, put in words, what I had never so much as whispered to myself?
It was several minutes later and after much had been said before I learned. He began with explanations.
“A woman is the victim of her own emotions. On that night Wealthy had been on the watch for hours either in the hall or in the sick room. She had seen you and another come and go under circumstances very agitating to one so devoted to the family. She was, therefore, not in a purely normal condition when she started up from her nap to settle a question upon which the life of a man might possibly hang.
“At least this was how the police reasoned. So they put off the experiment upon which they were resolved to an hour approximately the same in which the occurrence took place which they were planning to reproduce, keeping her, in the meantime, on watch for what interested her most. Pardon me, it was in connection with yourself,” he commented, flashing me a look from under his shaggy brows. “She has very strong beliefs on that point—strong enough to blind her or—” he broke off suddenly and as suddenly went on with his story. “Not till in apparent solitude she had worked herself up to a fine state of excitement did the Inspector show himself, and with a fine tale of the uselessness of expecting anything of a secret nature to take place in the house while her light was still burning and her figure guarded the hall, induced her to enter the room from which she might hope to see a repetition of what had happened on that fatal night. I honor the police. We could not do without them;—but their methods are sometimes—well, sometimes a little misleading.