“Wrong, Mr. Haviland, all wrong!” and Stone’s face was positively triumphant. “I’ve found an additional hint, in what you’ve just said, and I’m convinced I’m on the right track! One more question, Miss Frayne, about that conversation you so luckily overheard.”
“Luckily?” said Anita, her great blue eyes showing alarm in their startled gaze.
“Surely! Most fortunate, to my mind. Indeed, it may well be that that carefully exact memorandum of yours may be the means of clearing Miss Stuart of all suspicion. Now, tell me this. You heard only Miss Carrington’s voice, as if speaking to somebody. Did it sound as if she spoke always to the same person, or to more than one at the different times?”
“Well, it did sound as if she spoke to different persons, but it couldn’t have been so. Surely, if there had been more than one I must have heard some other words than her own.”
“Never mind your own surmises. You say, it seemed as if she addressed more than one person. Why?”
“Because she used a different intonation. At times angry, at times loving. But this is only an impression, as I now look back in memory. I haven’t thought about this point before.”
“Nor need you think of it again. You have told me all I want to know, and I assure you it will be of no use for you to mull this over or give it another thought.”
“But I don’t want you to think, Mr. Stone,” and Anita began to cry, “that I want to suspect Pauline——”
“I am not considering your wishes in the matter,” said Stone, coldly. “If you do not want to think Miss Stuart implicated in this matter, your words and actions are unintelligible to me, but they are equally unimportant, and I have neither time nor thoughts to waste on them.”
With this somewhat scathing speech, Stone went away, leaving the angry Anita to be comforted by Haviland.