“Sergeant Clegg asked me,” she asserted vehemently. “Sergeant Clegg shall know. The man is Morgan Llewellyn!!!”
Clegg received the announcement stolidly—he was progressing! Charles Stewart gave a gasp of astonishment and turned to her with an air of remonstrance.
“You’re mad, Marjorie! You’ve no right to bring an accusation of that kind. Why should Llewellyn have harmed my father?”
Clegg waited eagerly for the answer. He even got his note-book ready.
Marjorie Lennox faced her so-called cousin defiantly—her blue eyes challenging his grey ones. For a moment there was a silent battle for the mastery. Then before either of the men could stop her, she swept majestically from the room!
CHAPTER VII.
Butterworth Is Apprehensive of the Future
For the second time on that eventful morning Sergeant Clegg felt at loggerheads with circumstances. For the second time he felt that the Law had received a set-back—that he, its accredited representative, had been flouted!
Charles Stewart looked at him somewhat anxiously. How was he going to take this feminine outburst? Stewart attempted to smooth things over. “A trifle hysterical, I fancy, Sergeant, and it’s scarcely to be wondered at. She’s had a trying time—I know what it’s been like to me—it must be a thousand times worse for her.”
Clegg nodded. “H’m. Now that’s most extraordinary. There’s an ‘M. L.’ on the paper under your father’s hand—then there turns up a ‘Morgan Llewellyn’—then I find a ‘Marjorie Lennox’ and a——” he pulled himself up. He would keep the handkerchief incident absolutely to himself. “And to crown all—one of the ‘M. L.’s’ finishes up by accusing the other ‘M. L.’ ” He sighed and then gave expression to the point that had been his constant worry since his arrival. “What was the weapon the murderer used?”
Stewart broke in upon him. “With all deference, Sergeant, I shouldn’t place any reliance at all on what Miss Lennox said. She’s distraught.”