“When was that?”
“At half past eleven. I remember looking at my watch.”
“Humph!—when did you meet her first?”
“At half past eight. Come, doctor, you have made a mistake here at least,” said the young man with an assumption of ease he was far from feeling. “Give M’liss the benefit of the doubt.”
Dr. Duchesne replied by opening a drawer of his desk. After rummaging among the powders and mysterious looking instruments with which it was stored, he finally brought forth a longitudinal slip of folded white paper. It was appropriately labeled “Poison.”
“Look here,” said the doctor, opening the paper. It contained two or three black coarse hairs. “Do you know them?”
“No.”
“Look again!”
“It looks something like Melissa’s hair,” said the master, with a fathomless sinking of the heart.
“When I was called to look at the body,” continued the doctor with the deliberate cautiousness of a professional diagnosis, “my suspicions were aroused by the circumstance I told you of. I managed to get possession of the pistol, and found these hairs twisted around the lock as though they had been accidentally caught and violently disentangled. I don’t think that any one else saw them. I removed them without observation, and—they are at your service.”