“What, Mr. Stone? My father! Saw me shoot Mr. Appleby!”
“Yes; he says so. That is not strange, when, as you say, you fired the pistol from where you stood in the bay window, and Mr. Wheeler stood by or near the victim.”
“But—I don’t understand. You say, father says he saw me?”
“Yes, he told me that.”
Maida was silent, but she was evidently thinking deeply and rapidly.
“This is a trap of some sort, Mr. Stone,” she said at last. “My father didn’t see me shoot—he couldn’t have seen me, and consequently he couldn’t say he did! He wouldn’t lie about it!”
“But he said, at one time, that he did the shooting himself. Was not that an untruth?”
“Of a quite different sort. He said that in a justifiable effort to save me. But this other matter—for him to say he saw me shoot—when he didn’t—he couldn’t——”
“Why couldn’t he, Miss Wheeler? Why was it so impossible for your father to see you commit that crime, when he was right there?”
“Because—because—oh, Mr. Stone, I don’t know what to say! I feel sure I mustn’t say anything, or I shall regret it.”