She looked at him. "It was a man—an old native beggar. I only saw him for a moment. I was in Tommy's room, and he came and looked in at me. You—you must have seen him too. You were talking very excitedly about him. You threatened to shoot him."
"Was that how you came to deprive me of my revolver?" questioned Monck.
She coloured again vividly. "No, I thought you were going to shoot yourself. I will give it back to you presently."
"When you consider that I can be safely trusted with it?" he suggested, with his brief smile. "But tell me some more about this mysterious old beggar of yours! What was he like?"
She hesitated momentarily. "I only had a very fleeting glimpse of him. I can't tell you what he was really like. But—he reminded me of someone I never want to think of or suffer myself to think of again if I can help it."
"Who?" said Monck.
His voice was quiet, but it held insistence. She felt as if his eyes pierced her, compelling her reply.
"A horrible old native—a positive nightmare of a man—whom I shall always regard as in some way the cause of my husband's death."
In the pause that followed her words, Monck's hand left hers. He lay still looking at her, but with that steely intentness that told her nothing. She could not have said whether he were vitally interested in the matter or not when he spoke again.
"You think that he was murdered then?"