Sudden conjecture dawned in Vaughan’s eyes. “You’re going—” he began, and then paused.
Henry Carleton completed the sentence for him. “I’m going to see Mrs. Satterlee,” he answered. “I refuse to credit your story, Arthur, or what you say Jack admits, unless she corroborates your tale of what happened that night. It all depends on her.”
He turned to leave the room, then paused a moment, and again turned to Vaughan. “Have you told Jack,” he asked, “just what you propose to do?”
Vaughan shook his head. “I haven’t seen Jack,” he answered, “since the morning after it happened. To tell the truth, I’ve taken pains not to see him. I couldn’t bear to. The whole thing got on my nerves. It seemed to change him so. And about this part of it, I haven’t seen him, either. I couldn’t. To go to a man, and read him his death-warrant. I couldn’t. I thought I’d come to you.”
Carleton nodded. “I think you’ve done wisely,” he said, “if this can all be true, I must see Jack myself first. It becomes a family matter then. Well, I must go. Wait here for me, please. I won’t be long.”
For perhaps twenty minutes Vaughan sat alone in the library, his mind, after the long strain of all he had undergone, singularly torpid. Mechanically he found himself counting the squares on a rug near the table; three rows of six—three rows of five—eighteen, fifteen, thirty-three. Over and over again he did this until at last he pulled himself up short with a start. And then he heard footsteps ascending; and Henry Carleton hastily reëntered the room, his face stern and set. For an instant, as Vaughan rose, the two men stood confronting each other. “Well?” Vaughan asked, though reading the answer to his question in the other’s eyes.
Carleton nodded. In the lamplight his face looked ten years older. He spoke but two words. “It’s true,” he said.