“He is not to be removed from this house,” she insisted.
“Ten minutes ago you were suggesting a different———” he began sneeringly.
“The whole world has changed since then, James Brood,” she said, and her shoulders drooped. Almost instantly she recovered her poise. “I have a great deal to say to you later on.”
“Not a great deal,” he said meaningly.
He saw her flinch and was conscious of a curious pang, a poignant yet indefinable pang of remorse.
She went swiftly from the room. He looked for the revolver. It was gone. Somehow he found himself wondering if she had taken it away with her in the fear that he would turn it against himself in case——
“No powder stains,” he heard Hodder saying to his assistant. “Not a sign of 'em.”
“That's right,” said the assistant, shaking his head.
“Couldn't have been—no, of course not,” went on the first speaker in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Doesn't look that way,” agreed the assistant.