“But I don’t regret them,” put in Cray. “All this is important. Mr. Lockwood, do you deny obliterating these marks in question?”
“Of course I do,” Lockwood smiled slightly. “If I was moving the chair or touching it, when Miss Peyton came to call me to breakfast I don’t remember it. At any rate, it was with no intention of removing evidence.”
Gordon Lockwood told these falsehoods with as calm an air as he would have shown in making truthful statements. He was not only deeply in love with Anita Austin, but he did not and would not believe her guilty of crime, or of any connection with a crime. Wherefore, he was ready and willing to tell any number of lies to save or shield her.
And from his manner none could guess he was saying other than absolute truth.
“But look here,” spoke up Maurice Trask. “This won’t do, you know. Are you people accusing a girl of Doctor Waring’s murder? A girl!”
“Not accusation yet,” Cray told him, “but we want to know more about the young lady in question. In fact, she’s been dubbed Miss Mystery, because so little is known about her.”
“Miss Mystery, eh? And she came here to see the Doctor the night he died?”
“She did not!” Lockwood asserted, calmly. “Had she done so, I should have known it.”
“Of course you would,” Trask looked at him shrewdly. “Of course. But the impress of her clothing was left on the chairback? Is that it?”
“That’s it,” said Helen, sharply. “And when forty-leven other things prove her presence here that evening, I don’t know why Mr. Lockwood so positively denies it. He must have a deep interest in the young lady!”