"In one of my own books! The irony of fate, that! Please, Mr. Creighton, tell me why you happened to have Janet shadowed in the first place. What had she done to deserve this delicate attention? Is it possible that you suspected her?"
"I most certainly did." Chin cupped in both hands, his eyes fixed on the floor at his feet, he morosely supplied her with the salient features of the case as he had come upon them, from the discovery of the steel chip that pointed to an inside job to the moment when he learned that only Janet was missing from the house on the occasion of the monk's final appearance. "Then it developed that she hadn't been at the theater, as she was supposed to be. I argued from the return of the notebook that the case was drawing to a climax, so I went to New York to see if she would take advantage of my absence to slip away. When she did, it seemed pretty conclusive evidence of her guilt. I put Kitty Doyle on her track. Until this morning, the worst I thought of you was that your friendship for Janet had led you to condone her crime."
"Whereas the truth is exactly the reverse! Her friendship and my crime!" She gave a little shiver. "That chip from the dagger—interesting! It really started you on the right track, didn't it? I never knew I'd nicked the blade. Mmph. Extraordinary what trifles may affect our destinies! Funny, don't you think?"
Each word she uttered in that whimsical tone was like a needle pricking his heart. He threw out his hands protestingly, suddenly groaning the very phrase that Janet had used in her troubled dreams.
"Miss Ocky, why did you do it? Why did you do it?"
"Yes, I must tell you about that." Her reply was cool, matter-of-fact, and he did not see that she winced at the pain in his voice. "After all, I can plead extenuating circumstances. I'll make it short as possible; you can ask questions later if you wish. Meanwhile, please don't interrupt me or I'll lose track of my story.
"I had been away from here twenty-two years. When I came back ten weeks ago I discovered a situation that I had never dreamed existed. Lucy's letters had never been especially happy or cheerful, but neither had they contained anything to give me even an inkling of the truth. I did not know she was married to a human vampire, a sort of—of spiritual leech! Words can't tell you the difference between the Lucy I left and the Lucy I returned to! It hurt me—oh, it hurt me!
"You won't put down all that I say about Simon to personal prejudice because you have heard enough about him from others to realize how mean and selfish and—and psychically cruel he could be. He never beat Lucy, but that was simply because he specialized in a more refined type of cruelty—and if you want to know which of the two hurts a woman most, there are plenty of unfortunate wives who can tell you!
"Simon owed everything he had in the world to Lucy, for it was the money she brought to their marriage that enabled him to start his own tannery and gave him the opportunity to develop new processes that proved lucrative. Father disapproved of the match, but did not actively oppose it, and when he died shortly after, Simon's feet were on the road to fortune. Remember that, please!
"When I came home, I found he had completely broken Lucy's spirit and was deliberately trying to accomplish the same result in the case of his son. He had all but succeeded, too. Money seems to be the answer to practically every problem in this country to-day, so I was able to come to the boy's rescue. I told you one evening how I decided to put him on his feet, promote his elopement with Sheila Graham, who will make him an excellent wife—and incidentally put a spoke in Simon's wheel!