The handsome widow wore her usual sphinx-like expression and she was gazing steadily at Kane Landon. Avice thought she detected a look in the dark eyes as of a special, even intimate interest in the young man. She had no reason to think they were acquaintances, yet she couldn’t help thinking they appeared so. At any rate, Eleanor Black was paying little or no attention to the proceedings of the inquest. But Avice remembered she had expressed a distaste and aversion to detectives and all their works. Surely, the girl thought, she could not have cared very much for Uncle Rowly, if she doesn’t feel most intense interest in running the murderer to ground.
She turned again toward the coroner to hear him saying:
“And then, Miss Wilkinson, after this mysterious message, did Mr. Trowbridge leave the office at once?”
“Yes sir. Grabbed his hat and scooted right off. Said he wouldn’t be back all afternoon.”
“And you did not recognize the voice as any that you had ever heard?”
“No, sir.”
“And you gathered nothing from the conversation that gave you any hint of who the speaker might be?”
Whether it was the sharp eye of Mr. Berg compelling her, or a latent regard for the truth, the yellow-haired girl, for some reason, stammered out, “Well, sir, whoever it was, called Mr. Trowbridge ‘uncle.’”
Again one of those silences that seemed to shriek aloud in denunciation of the only man present who would be supposed to call Mr. Trowbridge “uncle.”
Berg turned toward Kane Landon. For a moment the two looked at each other, and then the younger man’s eyes fell. He seemed for an instant on the verge of collapse, and then, with an evident effort, drew himself up and faced the assembly.