“Of course, there’s no sense in tacking the crime on you, Braye,” and Landon sighed. “If it was a crime, and if anybody here committed it, they’ll more likely suspect me, for I’m the next heir after you, and if I could despatch two intervening heirs, I could also bump you off, I suppose.”
“Don’t talk like that, Wynne,” implored Milly. “It’s not like you, and I——”
“I’m only preparing you, Milly, dear, for what may come. That mutton-headed coroner can’t rest till he fastens murder on somebody,—and it might as well be me.”
“I want to go home, Wynne,—I want to go back to New York,” and Milly began to cry.
“You may, dear, just as soon as you like. But I must stay and see what happens up here. For me to run away would be, to say the least, suspicious.”
“Talk sense, Wynne,” broke in Braye; “I wasn’t here, you know, when those two people died. Tell me again, just where were you all?”
“Mr. Bruce and Professor Hardwick sat in those two chairs, confabbing,” Wynne explained; “I was passing things round, so was Mr. Tracy. Eve was running the tea things, Vernie was jumping about here and there, and Norma,—where were you, Norma?”
“I was near Mr. Bruce and the Professor, listening to their talk,” she returned. “I was greatly interested. Mr. Landon had just given me a cup of tea, and I was sipping it as I listened. There was nothing wrong about the tea, of that I’m certain.”
“Of course there wasn’t,” agreed Braye, who had heard the scene rehearsed many times. “There’s nothing wrong anywhere, that I can see, except that a dreadful thing has happened, and we must find out all we can about it. I’ve been to see Uncle Gif’s business friends, he has a few in New York, and they’re flabbergasted, of course. One of them, a Mr. Jennings, is sure it’s a desperate murder, cleverly contrived by some people in Chicago, who are enemies of Uncle’s, and who, he says, are diabolically ingenious enough to have brought it about. He holds that Vernie’s death was accidental,—I mean that they only intended to kill Uncle Gifford. I can’t believe in this talk, for how could it have been brought about? But Jennings thinks it was through the servants,—and that they’re really enemies in disguise.”
“Why, they’re all natives of this section,” exclaimed the Professor, “how could they be implicated?”