“You’re ’way off, Mr. Stone! If you’ll excuse my saying so, Miss Stuart has pulled the wool over your eyes until you don’t know where you’re at.”
Fleming Stone gasped. Pulled wool over his eyes! Over the eyes, the gimlet eyes, the all-seeing eyes of Fleming Stone! What could the man mean? And this so-called wool pulled by a woman! What unheard-of absurdity!
“Mr. Hardy,——” he began.
“Yes, yes, I know. Nothing of the sort, and all that. But it’s true, Mr. Stone. Miss Stuart is a siren from Sirenville. She can make any man think black is white if she chooses. And she has been bullied and cowed by that old aunt of hers for years, and for my part, I don’t blame her for getting to the end of her rope. If she——”
“Stop! Mr. Hardy, I know you think you’re right, but you are not! Do you hear, you are not! And I’ll prove it to you, and that soon! I’ll ferret out this thing, and I’ll do it on this new theory of mine whether you believe it or not!”
Hardy looked at the man in amazement. He had expected a different mode of procedure from this talented sleuth. He had looked for a quiet, even icy, demeanor, and magical and instantaneous solution of all mystery. And here was the great man, clearly baffled at the queerly tangled web of evidence, and, moreover, caught in the toils of a woman whom Hardy fully believed to be the criminal herself.
But he only said quietly, “What way does your theory point, Mr. Stone? I may be able to help you.”
“You can’t, Hardy, because you’re so determined to find Miss Stuart guilty that you couldn’t see it as I do. You consider the strange features of this case—and Lord knows they are strange!—separately, whereas they must be looked at as a whole. The gown, the quantity of jewelry, the smiling face, the glove, the overheard conversation,—all these points are to be considered as of one import,—as leading to one conclusion. And you think of them as implicating—separately, mind you—Miss Stuart, Miss Frayne, and the noble Count. Now, all those queer points are not only connected, but identical in their significance. But never mind that. Here’s the place to begin. Miss Carrington was poisoned. She didn’t poison herself. Who did?”
“Mr. Stone, you have put it tersely. I entirely agree that all we are seeking is the answer to that last question of yours.”
“I will yet give it to you,” and Fleming Stone spoke solemnly rather than boastingly. “The poison, the aconitine, was taken by Miss Carrington as she sat there at her own dressing-table. She took it willingly, smilingly,——”