She seemed relieved and asked if her mother had also told us of her position with regard to Harland. When she saw how fully we'd been informed she gave a deep sigh and said:
"Now you can understand why I prevaricated that day in Mr. Whitney's office. I was trying to shield my father, to help him any way I could. Oh, if I'd known the truth then or you had—the truth you don't know even yet! It was Johnston Barker that was murdered and Hollings Harland who murdered him!"
I started forward, but she raised a silencing hand, her voice shaken and pleading:
"Don't, please, say anything. Let me go on in my own way. It's so hard to tell." She dropped the hand to its fellow and holding them tight-clenched in her lap, said slowly: "If my mother told you of that conversation I had with Mr. Harland you know what I discovered then—that he loved me. I never suspected it before, but when he pressed me with questions about Johnston Barker, so unlike himself, vehement and excited, I understood and was sorry for him. I told him as much as I could then, explained my feeling for the man he was jealous of without telling my relationship, said how I respected and trusted him, what any girl might say of her father. He seemed relieved but went on to ask if Mr. Barker and I were not interested in some scheme, some undertaking of a secret nature. That frightened me, it sounded as if he had found out about us, had been told something by someone. Taken by surprise, I answered with a half truth, that Mr. Barker had a plan on foot for my welfare, that he wanted to help me and my mother to a better financial position, but that I was not yet at liberty to tell what it was. I saw he thought I meant business, and as I go on, you'll see how that information gave him the confidence to do what he did later.
"I know now that the Whitney office discovered I had had a letter from Mr. Barker mailed from Toronto asking me to join him there and that I agreed to do so in a phone message that same day. That letter, directed to my office, was in typewriting and was signed with my father's initials. It was short, merely telling me that there was a reason for his disappearance which he would explain to me, that his whereabouts must be kept secret, and that he wanted me to come to him to make arrangements for a new business venture in which he hoped to set me up. As you know I attempted to do what he asked, and was followed by two men from the Whitney office."
"How do you know all this?" I couldn't help butting in.
She gave a slight smile, the first I had seen on her face:
"I'll tell you that later—it's not the least curious part of my story. Realizing by the papers that there was a general hue and cry for him I was very cautious, much more so than your detectives thought. I saw them, decided the move was too dangerous, and came back. At that time, and for some time afterward, I believed that letter was from my father."
"Wasn't it?"
She shook her head: