“Did he say why?”
“No. He rang me up at the library and asked me if there wasn’t a gun in the collection which would shoot. I told him I didn’t know, but I supposed so. He said he’d seen a derringer in there, which he thought was in pretty good shape, and thought we could get shells for it. He asked me to get the gun and get some shells for it. He said he only wanted it for a few days, and then I could put it back.”
“Didn’t that request seem rather unreasonable?” Mason asked.
“Of course not. I was in love,” she said simply, as one might talk of a happy home life before it had been completely destroyed by some catastrophe.
“So you went back home in order to burn up the letters?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t it to hide the shells?”
“No.”
“But you did try to hide the shells?”
“After I got there, I decided it would be a good plan to get rid of them.”