"Young and pretty, with dark brown eyes and brown curly hair. Oh, I can place her for you. She said she had been employed to help get the information against me and my father, and was the only woman acting in that capacity."
"Molly!" I gasped, falling back into my chair. "Molly Babbitts! What in Heaven's name—"
"You're right to invoke Heaven's name, for it was Heaven that sent her. She wouldn't tell me who she was or why she came, but I could see. What reason could there have been except that she believed me innocent and wanted to help me escape?"
For a moment I couldn't speak. I dropped my head and a silent oath went up from me to hold Molly sacred forever more. I could see it all—she'd found her heart, realized the cruelty of what was to be done, discovered in some way she'd given me wrong information, and done the thing herself. The gallant, noble little soul! God bless her! God bless her!
Carol went on:
"I wonder now what she thought of me. I must have appeared utterly extraordinary to her. She thought she was telling me what I already knew, or at least knew something of. But as I sat there listening to her I was piecing together in my mind what she was saying with what I myself had found out. I was building up a complete story, fitting new and old together, and it held me dumb, motionless, as if I didn't care. It would take too long to tell you how I got at the main facts—the smaller points I didn't think of. It was as if what she said and what I knew jumped toward each other like the flame and the igniting gas, connecting the broken bits into a continuous line of fire. I knew that murder had been committed. I knew that the body was unrecognizable. I knew that had my father been living I would have heard from him. I knew that the voice on the phone was Harland's. Without all the details she gave me it would have been enough. Before she had finished my mind had grasped the truth. It was Johnston Barker who had been murdered and Harland—trying now to draw me to him—was the murderer.
"Do you guess what a flame of rage burst up in me—what a passion to trap and bring to justice the man who could conceive and execute such a devilish thing? I could hardly wait to go. I was too wrought up to think out a reasonable course. Looking back on it today it seems like an act of madness, but I suppose a person in that state is half mad. I never thought of getting anybody to go with me, of applying to the police. I only saw myself finding Harland and accusing him. It's inconceivable—the irrational action of a woman beside herself with grief and fury.
"I called up the number he'd given me and told him I was coming on the first train I could catch. He told me at what hour that morning it would leave New York and when it would reach Quebec. He said he would send his servant, a French woman, to meet me at the depot as he didn't like to risk going himself. Then I left the house and went to the Grand Central Station, where I sat in the women's waiting room for the rest of the night.
"I did not get to Quebec till after midnight. The servant met me, put me in a sleigh that was waiting for us, and together we drove here.
"The house was lit up, every lower window bright. As we walked up the path from the gate I saw a man moving behind the shrubbery and called her attention to him. While she was opening the door with her key I noticed another loitering along the footpath by the gate, obviously watching us. This time I asked her why there should be men about at such an hour and on such a freezing night. She seemed bewildered and frightened, muttering something in French about having noticed them when she went out. In the hallway she directed me to a room on the upper floor, telling me, when I was ready, to go down to the dining-room where supper was waiting.