His face, in fact, mirrored the whole gamut of human emotions of the darker sort; overwhelming sorrow was there at first, and then, succeeding slowly, amazement and unbelief, and after them trembling anger. Black fire shot from his deepset eyes, as they switched to Hitchin; his lips became a ghastly white line; his mighty chest rose and fell; and now he had taken Hobart Hitchin's arm again and led him back to a dusky corridor.
"You!" said Dalton. "I don't know who you are and why you came here; but this I ask you, and if you don't answer truthfully, God help you! Does that trunk, to your belief, contain the body of the boy you call Prentiss?"
"To my almost certain knowledge!"
"And he was murdered in the apartment of Anthony Fry?"
"He was, sir, and——"
"Come!" said Theodore Dalton, once more, and they returned to the study in a series of stumbles and little jumps.
Once in the dark, handsome room Theodore Dalton walked straight to the cabinet in the corner and, with a key, opened the topmost drawer. He extracted therefrom a heavy automatic pistol and slipped out its magazine. He opened a box of cartridges and filled the little box; and when it had clicked into the handle of the automatic, and the pistol itself was in his pocket.
"There was a cab leaving the door when you came," he said quietly. "Did you dismiss it?"
"I—I believe so," said Hobart Hitchin, who as an actual fact liked neither the sight of the weapon nor the sight of Dalton just now.
"Bates!" Dalton spoke into the little interior telephone. "My car!"