It was too bewildering, too inexplicable. Again and again Stone scanned the powder papers. They told nothing more than that they were the powder papers. That was positive, but what did it prove? To whom did it point?
Frowning, Stone studied his own face in the mirror before him. Desperately, he repeated again all the sentences on Anita’s list.
At one of them he paused, even in the act of repetition.
He stared blankly into his own mirrored eyes, a dawning light beginning to flame back at him. Then, a little wildly, he glanced around,—up, down, and back to his almost frenzied, reflected face.
“Oh!” he muttered, through his clinched teeth, for Stone was not a man given to strong expletives, “it is! I’ve got it at last! The powder, the pearls,—the snake! My Heavens! the snake! Oh, Pauline, my love, my love—but who? who? Have I discovered this thing only to lead back to her? I won’t have it so! I am on the right track at last, and I’ll follow it to the end—the end, but it shall not lead, I know it will not—to my heart’s idol, my beautiful Pauline!”
XXI
FLEMING STONE’S THEORY
Alone in the library, Fleming Stone and Detective Hardy were in counsel.
“I’m going to show you this thing as I see it, Mr. Hardy,” said Stone. “I frankly admit it’s all theory, I haven’t a particle of human testimony to back it, but it seems to me the only solution that will fit all points of the mystery. And I shall ask you to consider it confidential for the present, until I can corroborate it by unmistakable proofs.”
Hardy nodded assent, his eyes fixed on the speaker in a sort of fascination.
This young detective had not been at all idle of late, but his work had amounted to nothing definite, and though he was himself convinced that Pauline Stuart was responsible for her aunt’s death, he seldom exploited that view before Stone, having learned that it was an unwelcome subject.