He demanded Miss Stuart’s immediate arrest, claiming that only she could have persuaded her aunt to swallow the poisoned draught.
Inspector Brunt was not quite willing to order arrest, but he set machinery at work which he hoped would bring decisive results of some sort.
It did.
That same evening, Pauline went to Fleming Stone. The two were alone. Standing before him, in all her somewhat tragic beauty, Pauline asked: “You don’t think me guilty, Mr. Stone?”
He looked deep in the great, dark eyes that seemed to challenge his very soul, and after a moment’s steady glance, he replied, “I know you are not, Miss Stuart.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I hope to.”
“That means nothing. Are you sure you can?”
Fleming Stone looked troubled. Never before in his career had he been unable to declare his surety of success; but with those compelling eyes upon him he couldn’t deny a present doubt.
Shaking himself, as if to be freed from a spell, he said, at last, “Miss Stuart, I am not sure. I am convinced of your innocence, but the only theory of guilt that I can conceive of is so difficult, so almost impossible of proof, and so lacking in plausibility, that it seems hopeless. If determination and desperate effort can do it, you shall be exonerated. But there are many circumstances not in your favor. These I shall overcome, eventually. But, to be honest, until I can get a clue or a link of some sort to join my purely imaginative theory to some tangible fact, I can do little. I am working day and night in my efforts to find this connection I seek, but it may take a long time. Meanwhile——”