“Travers has been there waiting since last night. Tracy never showed up. Travers had no message from him and left this evening for Moosehead Lake.”
For a moment there was no comment. Anne raised her eyes, the sides of the room looked a long way off and the light seemed to have intensified to a violent glare as if she were sitting in the midst of a dazzling illumination. The men’s faces were turned to her, glazed by the radiance like glistening masks.
“I don’t know what to make of that,” she said, the words dropping slowly with spaces between.
“Neither do we, Miss Tracy,” said Rawson, and leaning back, his hands clasped over his stomach, he gazed intently at her through his horn-rimmed glasses.
The glow increased, wrapped her round in a flame-like heat that ran along her skin in prickling points. It shone on the lenses of Rawson’s glasses which seemed to grow larger and come nearer, malignly glaring.
“Yes, you do,” she said and heard her voice hoarse and changed. “You’ve made something of it already. And what you’ve made is lies—wicked lies.”
Then she had seen it. Bassett made a step forward, but she leaped to her feet, oblivious of him:
“You think he did it, just because you can’t find him. That’s all he’s done, gone away. You must be crazy. What would he do it for? Don’t you have to have a reason to commit murder?”
Williams was sorry for her, a pallid panting creature shaken out of her gentle semblance by an unexpected revelation. “Come now, Miss Tracy,” he urged. “Don’t get worked up.”
But she paid no heed, pouring out her words at Rawson who remained without change of position, looking fixedly at her.