"Then why don't you tell me, Letty? Is it fair for you to keep silent?"
"No, but then you must remember that I am Mr. Adams' private clerk, and he is working on this case in the interests of Miss Langmore."
"I know he is working for her and I hope he clears her. I always thought she was a pretty nice kind of a girl, and I can't believe that she is guilty."
"Tom, did you ever imagine they would think you were guilty?" and she gazed at him earnestly, as if to search his very soul.
He started.
"Me? Why—why should anybody imagine I was guilty? It's—it's out of all reason." He drew a quick breath. "Letty, do you mean to insinuate that Mr. Adams imagines—"
"You mustn't ask me questions, Tom. But think over what you have told me—of that letter your brother Dick wrote asking for money, and how you visited the house on the very morning of the murder to get the money, and how Mr. Langmore took the letter from your mother and tore it in half, and the scene afterwards."
"Yes, I know. But—"
"And then think of the way by which Mr. Langmore and your mother died. Killed by a curious poison, something that they inhaled, which, when the doctor got a whiff of it, gave him cramps in the stomach—a curious drug not generally known to medical science, a drug—"
He caught her by the wrist and looked fearfully, frightfully, into her face.