“Can’t you imagine a purpose, Mr. Bassett?”
“Good God, you don’t mean to say you think he did it?”
“I’m not saying anything yet. But I’d like you to tell me how you explain it. He says he’s going, leads every one to think he’s going, makes all the preparations for his departure, then secretly, without divulging any change of plans, doesn’t go. Aren’t those actions—well to put it mildly—questionable?”
“Yes—the whole thing’s inexplicable as we see it now.”
“And note this. He had cause for anger against Miss Saunders—she’d given him away to you—and you yourself have told us that he had an ungovernable temper.”
“He had a devilish temper and a damned mean disposition and I make no doubt he was blazing mad with her. But that he’d go to work to kill her in cold blood, lay in wait for her—no—you can’t make me think that.”
“Same here,” said Williams. “You ain’t got enough provocation. With Mrs. Stokes you have—a woman jealous of her husband.”
“And you’ve got a man,” retorted Rawson, “moved by one of the passions that lead oftenest to murder—revenge.”
“Revenge?” echoed Williams.
“Miss Saunders’ accusation, if true,—and I think it was,—would ruin him in his profession. He learned what she’d done to him just before he was due to leave.”