But she calmly interrupted him.
"You must drive down to Mrs. Florian's and bring her here in your buggy; I am going home with you. Your entire course in this matter has been wrong,"—firmly. "Joyce is innocent, of course, and the truth can't hurt."
"But you don't know," he still persisted.
"No; that is very true," she returned, looking steadily at him; "but I will shortly.... Come—let us go in now." And together they entered the house.
At once the condition of the sorely stricken mother drove everything else temporarily from their minds. John Converse nor any other person would ever again hear a sound issue from those moveless lips.
So another door was closed.
CHAPTER V
A DECISION AND A LETTER
If Mr. Converse departed from the cottage with a feeling of depression, it was based, as we know, upon a formidable number of reasons. If the sensation was incompatible with his profession, it at least proved that, as a human being, he was not so utterly devoid of feeling as his grim exterior continually indicated; and when the irresistible logic of the present investigation singled out again and again a beautiful girl as the author of a monstrous assassination; when the amorphous figure of Paquita—that featureless, shadowy phantom—presented itself between his mental vision and Joyce Westbrook—it was with a sense of relief that he asked, "Paquita, what do you spell?" There was always the hope that sooner or later an answer would be returned clearing Joyce beyond peradventure.
That he did not consider Fairchild accessory to either crime was a belief resting upon a very sound foundation of reasoning, although such a conviction must needs be an additional point adverse to Joyce. The testimony delivered by Doctor Westbrook and Mr. Howe of Georgia at the inquest, relating to Fairchild's strange behavior when he beheld the body of De Sanchez lying on the Doctor's reception room floor, and a careful analysis of this evidence—although it certainly left the young man's conduct something to be explained—would not admit the idea of a guilty knowledge on his part, or of an active participation in the crime itself. Before he entered the reception-room he must have known that the Doctor or some other person was there, for a light was burning brightly therein; that the deed had been discovered; and it was certain that even then the police were on their way thither, if they had not already arrived. Yet he entered the office unhesitatingly. Again, no powerful emotions were betrayed by him until after he had seen the body, and then his first change of expression betokened surprise and bewilderment. The rapidly succeeding horror and terror were present while he was looking at Doctor Westbrook, and not at the body. "I was quite as much astonished by his behavior," was Mr. Howe's testimony hereof, "as by anything that had happened before.... The mere sight of the body did not, to my mind, account for the extremity of emotion depicted on his countenance, which seemed completely to overwhelm him." There was a quality about the look with which he regarded Doctor Westbrook so dreadful that it spurred the Doctor from his own preoccupying excitement and agitation to demand an explanation.