“Millicent,” Phyllis said, looking at her seriously, “you are only too ready to assume the guilt of any one you suspect at the moment. I admit your theory, but—I can’t believe Phil did it!”
“No,” cried Millicent, “because you are in love with Phil! That’s the reason you won’t look facts in the face! I declare, Phyllis, you have more interest in your foolish love affairs than in discovering the murderer of my brother! But I am determined to find the villain who shot Robert Gleason! I shall find him—I promise you that! I am not mercenary, I shall devote every last cent of my money—or my brother’s money to tracking down the murderer.”
“Do you know,” said Pollard, quietly, “it seems to me that we all look at this thing too close by. I mean, too much from a personal viewpoint. You, Mrs Lindsay, want to find your brother’s murderer, but you, Phyllis, and you, Louis, are more interested in whether friends of yours are implicated or not. Isn’t that so, Lane?”
“Yes,” agreed Fred Lane. “But, see here, Pollard, I’m laying aside this personal interest you speak of, and I’m trying to go merely and solely by evidence. Now, I think that the evidence against Phil Barry is pretty positive.”
“Well, I don’t,’” Pollard disagreed with him. “It is, in a way—but, good Lord, man, lots of people may write to a person without intending to kill him.”
“Not a letter like Barry’s.”
“Yes, just that. Oh, for Heaven’s sake, use a little intelligence! If Barry had meant to kill Gleason, do you suppose he would have written that letter? Never!”
“Yes, I think he would.” Lane spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “You see, Pol, you’re tarred with the same brush—I mean the artistic temperament, and you ought to see that a man’s mind works spasmodically. Barry had the impulse to kill, I hold, and he wrote that warning letter as—well, as a salve to his conscience, and there it is.”
Meantime, Detective Prescott was on the job. He had taken Barry down to the Washington Square house, but not to Robert Gleason’s apartment.
It was Miss Adams’ doorbell he rang, and to her home he escorted Philip Barry.