“Did you wheedle Thaddeus Miller into making a will in your favour and then murder him?”
So quickly that her act seemed rather involuntary than by any conscious impulse, she leaped to her feet, her breast rising and falling tumultuously. She struggled inarticulately for speech, raised her hand as though to strike him in the face, and collapsed in a swoon at his feet.
Lanagan gazed coldly down upon her without qualm. He was impersonal now; the incarnation of newspaper truth. He only regretted that she had balked him by swooning. Swiftly he straightened her out, loosed her collar, and was busily engaged chafing her hands when heavy footfalls sounded from the porch, and the bell rang loudly.
“By the brogans and the ring, our friends of the upper office,” commented Lanagan cynically as he opened the door. Quinlan and Pryor from the Oakland department entered, viewing Lanagan suspiciously as they beheld the still form upon the floor.
“She’s in better shape for the hospital than your third degree in the detinue cells,” remarked Lanagan, vouchsafing no explanations. “Went out just this minute as I was interviewing her.”
Quinlan and Pryor settled themselves heavily, lit fresh cigars, made laboured notes of the circumstances, and, when Lanagan finally restored the woman, gave her some breathing space and then informed her that she was to be taken to see her husband. To Lanagan she directed no look—addressed no word. She moved as one in a trance.
The detectives and their prisoner departed and Lanagan turned for the Miller cottage.
“That was a pure soul’s denial or it was a guilty soul’s defiance,” thought Lanagan. “But which?”
Long he turned that over.
“Frankly, on type I mistrust her; but what about that look in Miller’s eyes?”