“So far I am unable to go beyond the newspaper account. On the face of it, your father—with what provocation of course I do not know—did attempt this Mr Frank Whitmarsh’s life and then take his own. You imply another version. What reason have you?”
“That is the terrible part of it,” exclaimed the girl, with rising distress. “It was that which made me so afraid of coming to you, although I felt that I must, for I dreaded that when you asked me for proofs and I could give you none you would refuse to help me. We were not even in time to hear him speak, and yet I know, know with absolute conviction, that my father would not have done this. There are things that you cannot explain, Mr Carrados, and—well, there is an end of it.”
Her voice sank to an absent-minded whisper.
“Everyone will condemn him now that he cannot defend himself, and yet he could not even have had the revolver that was found at his feet.”
“What is that?” demanded Carrados sharply. “Do you mean that?”
“Mean what?” she asked, with the blankness of one who has lost the thread of her own thoughts.
“What you said about the revolver—that your father could not have had it?”
“The revolver?” she repeated half wearily; “oh yes. It was a heavy, old-fashioned affair. It had been lying in a drawer of his desk for more than ten years because once a dog came into the orchard in broad daylight light and worried half-a-dozen lambs before anyone could do anything.”
“Yes, but why could he not have it on Thursday?”
“I noticed that it was gone. After Frank had left in the afternoon I went into the room where he had been waiting, to finish dusting. The paper says the dining-room, but it was really papa’s business-room and no one else used it. Then when I was dusting the desk I saw that the revolver was no longer there.”