Allen couldn’t be sure whether this changed her mental attitude or whether she continued as she had meant to when she began.
But she said: “Oh, I don’t mean that! I mean, did I do right to confess my crime at once? You know they would discover it sooner or later, and I thought it would save time and trouble for me to own up immediately.”
“Dear Mrs. Wheeler, don’t quibble with me. I know you didn’t do it——”
“Oh, yes, I did, Jeff. Who else could it have been? And, too, you know about the bugler, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what made me do it. You see, I thought if a death occurred, that would be the death the bugler was heralding, and if it wasn’t Mr. Appleby it might have been Dan himself.”
She leaned forward as she spoke, her voice dropped to a mere whisper, and her large eyes took on a glassy stare, while her white face was drawn and set with an agonized expression as of a dreadful memory.
“And you killed Appleby for that reason?” cried Allen.
“Oh, no—I killed him because—because”—her mind seemed to wander—“oh, yes,” she resumed, “because he was a menace to Dan. To my husband.”
For the first time Allen began to doubt her sanity. Her eyes were wild, her fingers nervously interlaced and her speech was jerky and stammering.