I said nothing. What did it mean? Was she, after all, guilty—or at least a party to the crime? The very idea was repugnant to me. I knew it was of no use to quiz Craig. He was still non-committal and impartial. At least I hoped he was still impartial to her.
XV
THE CONFLICTING CLUES
It was early the following morning that Doyle burst in on us, very excited and waving a morning paper.
"Have you read the news?" he demanded, slapping the paper down in front of Kennedy.
We read at the point where Doyle's forefinger indicated. It was a personal inserted among the advertisements by Doctor Lathrop himself. No longer, it announced, would he be responsible for the debts of Vina Lathrop, his wife. Lathrop had at last definitely broken with her.
Kennedy and I exchanged glances. I recalled the quarrel we had interrupted on our last visit to them. Evidently that had been the climax. Nor was I surprised. It had seemed inconceivable to me, since my conversation with Belle Balcom, that ever Lathrop could be the kind of man to sit complacently under the growing gossip about Vina. How he had even waited so long was a mystery, unless to assure himself that what he heard was the truth. For men of Lathrop's stamp are the last to condone anything in a wife, no matter what may be their own standards for themselves.
"Well, at any rate," conjectured Doyle, rather heartlessly, I thought, "I don't think people will waste a great deal of sympathy on her. It leaves Vina Lathrop no more than she deserves. The man she tried to use is dead. The man she sought to capture has turned her down cold. Now the husband she had no use for, except as a meal ticket, has left her. I can't see but what that dame had it all coming to her."
Kennedy refrained from comment. "Where has she gone?" he asked merely. "Do you know?"
Doyle shook his head. "This is the first that I knew that they were separated," he responded. "No, I haven't any idea where she is."