“That I can't say. I hardly think the verdict will be conclusive in any case. But they haven't any more evidence than at first—that he had a quarrel with your father just before the fatal end. As to the nature of the quarrel, Harry is silent—obstinately silent even to his own counsel; and in this I can not uphold him. However, that is his affair.”
“But I'm sure, Colonel, that he had nothing to do with my father's death; aren't you?”
“If I said I was sure, my dear, and afterward, through force of evidence and circumstance, were forced to change my opinion, you would not thank me for now saying what you want me to say,” was the reply. “It is better for me to say that I do not know. I trust for the best. I hope, for your sake and his, that he had nothing to do with the terrible crime. I want to see the guilty person discovered and punished, and to that end I am working night and day. And if I find out who it is, I will disclose him—or her—no matter what anguish it costs me personally—no matter what anguish it may bring to others. I would not be doing my full duty otherwise.”
“No, I realize that, Colonel. Oh, it is hard—so hard! If we only knew!”
“We may know,” said the colonel gently.
“Soon?” she asked hopefully.
“Sooner than you expect,” he answered with a smile. “Now I must attend the jury session.”
It was brief, and not at all sensational, much to the regret of the reporters for the New York papers who flocked to the quiet and fashionable seaside resort. The upshot of the matter was that the chemists for the state reported that Mr. Carwell had met his death from the effects of some violent poison, the nature of which resembled several kinds, but which did not analyze as being any particular one with which they were, at present, familiar.
There were traces of both arsenic and strychnine, but mingled with them was some narcotic of strange composition, which was deadly in its effect, as had been proved on guinea pigs, some of the residue from the stomach and viscera of the dead man having been injected into the hapless animals.
Harry Bartlett was not called to the stand, but, pale from his confinement, sat an interested and vital spectator of the proceedings.