And if he looked for an effect upon Dalton, the effect was there even in excess of any expectation! Theodore Dalton, after one quick downward glance, cried out queerly, thickly, far down in his throat! His eyes seemed to start from his head; his hands, going out together, snatched up the trousers and held them nearer to the window. With a jerk, Theodore Dalton turned one of the rear pockets inside out and looked swiftly at the little linen name-plate sewed therein by the tailor who had made them.
The trousers dropped from his fingers and Theodore Dalton collapsed!
Gray, gasping, unable to speak at first, he crumpled into the chair beside the table and stared up numbly at Hobart Hitchin, who smiled just as he had always meant to smile in the event of such a moment coming before his death.
"You—you!" Dalton choked. "You say—the wearer of those trousers has been murdered?"
"As you know," said Hobart Hitchin. "The boy——"
"A boy about twenty-two, smooth shaven—a nice kid—a boy with a shock of brown hair and—and——" Theodore Dalton cried, in a queer, broken little voice, as he gripped the table. "No! No! Not that boy!"
"That boy!" said Hitchin. "David Prentiss!"
Dalton's whole soul seemed to burst!
"It was no David Prentiss!" he cried. "My—my daughter's gone and now my only son has been murdered!"