I glanced in Miss Cooper's direction. Her blue eyes were regarding me with an expression of deep and interested attention, but they also yielded a faint light of some emotion which materially aided me to a decision. I can make my position clear only by briefly sketching what was going on in my own mind.
Why did I hesitate to decide between Maillot and Burke in charging one or the other of them with the perpetration of this crime?—for crime it was, beyond a shadow of doubt. Well, there were several reasons, any one of which was sufficient, to indicate what my attitude toward these two men should be.
In the first place, both had frankly and without the least hint of reserve respecting each other's attitude that I had been able to detect, told stories which they must have known beforehand would tend strongly to incriminate them; but notwithstanding this fact, they had given their accounts with a knowledge that if they maintained a strict silence, I must have remained unable to find this information otherwise. The hostility between the two—and I could not account for it—did not explain this willingness, because neither had made an open attempt to direct suspicion toward the other.
I make a possible exception here: Burke's enigmatic conduct while we were examining the hidden safe might be construed as innuendo deliberately planned. On the other hand, if he were innocent, and considering that the two had been alone, then he might honestly have believed Maillot to be guilty, but was reluctant to make a charge which he was unable to defend with tangible proof. The circumstance of their stories agreeing in all essentials verified my conclusion that both had told the truth; still it was possible that either of them might not have told all the truth.
Again, I was convinced by the manners of both that there was more behind the tragedy than had been made to appear, excepting by the haziest sort of allusion; a potential factor whose existence had been barely suggested, whose nature remained entirely obscure. On the surface it looked as if somebody had slain Felix Page and stolen the ruby. Simple enough. But was this all? I was sure not.
The point, though, that I wish to make is this: whatever the prime motive for the murder might have been, Maillot had not the slightest idea respecting it, nor did he even suspect that such a motive existed. He was still too dazed from the whirl of events of the past twenty-four hours to consider the matter in any other light than the way in which it most nearly affected himself.
As for Burke, I was pretty much in doubt. I felt that he knew something that he was keeping in reserve, but what it might be or how to get hold of him and force the information from him I did not at this stage know.
If anything at all about the puzzle was clear, it was that the two had not and were not working together. Individually, the evidence—such as it was—more strongly indicated Maillot. It was at this moment that I looked toward Miss Cooper and decided.
"Maillot," said I, tersely, "it's up to you and Burke to submit to a personal search."
He flushed hotly, but maintained his attitude of calm. I did not dare a glance in Miss Fluette's direction.