Bassett spoke up quickly:
“No, she wasn’t acting. You’d have known that if you’d seen her. What she did was natural—a woman suffering from a fearful shock.”
“Couldn’t an actor put that on?”
“Yes, some could, but I’m certain she wasn’t.”
“When Stokes came into the room after the shot,” said Rawson, “how did he behave?”
“He seemed all right. But I can’t honestly say that I noticed him much. The light was fading and I was so irritated by the thought that some one had been shooting that I didn’t pay any attention to him.”
“Oh, rubbish!” Williams made a rolling motion in the scoop of the big chair. “You can’t suspect the man; he was in love with her. He didn’t want to kill her, he wanted to keep her alive.”
“Men do kill the women they love, especially when they can’t get her.”
“Yes, they do. I’ve known of such cases. But that’s impulse. This was premeditated.” The sheriff pointed at the revolver lying on the desk. “Sometime to-day somebody located that gun, took it for a purpose—not to shoot sea-gulls as you thought, Mr. Bassett.”
Rawson looked at the pistol: