I stopped a moment to consider.
"Remember, that would explain something which admits of no other reasonable explanation," went on my companion; "the barred windows and the behavior of the prisoner."
"It would explain that, certainly," I admitted, though, at first thought, the theory did not appeal to me. "You believe, then that Miss Holladay was forcibly abducted?"
"Undoubtedly. If her mind was going to give way at all, it would have done so at once, and not two weeks after the tragedy."
"But if she had brooded over it," I objected.
"She wasn't brooding—at least, she had ceased to brood. You have Mr. Royce's word and the butler's word that she was getting better, brighter, quite like her old self again. Why should she relapse?"
"I don't know," I said helplessly. "The more I reason about it, the more unreasonable it all seems. Besides, that affair last night has upset me so that I can't think clearly. I feel that I was careless—that I wasn't doing my duty."
"I shouldn't worry about it; though, of course," she added a little severely, "you've realized by this time that you alone are to blame for Martigny's presence on the boat."
"But I had to go to the Jourdains'," I protested, "and I couldn't help their going to him—to have asked them not to go would have made them suspect me at once."
"Oh, yes; but, at least, you needn't have sent them. They might not have gone at all—certainly they wouldn't have gone so promptly—if you hadn't sent them."