“Then you only just missed him!” I exclaimed. “He got off by the skin of his teeth. It’s wonderful, when you were so near, you shouldn’t have managed to overtake him! One would have thought you must have been able to track him to earth somehow!”
“One would have thought so,” the Inspector answered, rather crestfallen. “But policemen, after all, are human like the rest of us. We missed the one chance that might have led to an arrest. And now, what I want to ask you once more is this: Reflecting over what you’ve heard and read to-day, do you think you can recollect—a very small matter—whether or not there were SEVERAL distinct flashes?”
I shut my eyes once more, and looked hard into the past. Slowly, as I looked, a sort of dream seemed to come over me. I saw it vaguely now, or thought I saw it. Flash, flash, flash, flash. Then the sound of the pistol. Then the Picture, and the Horror, and the awful blank. I opened my eyes again, and told the Inspector so.
“And once more,” he went on, in a very insinuating voice. “Shut your eyes again, and look back upon that day. Can’t you remember whether or not, just a moment before, you saw the murderer’s face by the light of the flashes?”
I shut my eyes and thought. Again the flashes seemed to stand out clear and distinct. But no detail supervened—no face came back to me. I felt it was useless.
“Impossible!” I said shortly. “It only makes my head swim. I can remember no further.”
“I see,” the Inspector answered. “It’s just as Dr. Wade said. Suggest a fact in your past history, and you may possibly remember it; but ask you to recall anything not suggested or already known, and all seems a mere blank to you! You haven’t the faintest idea, then, who the murderer was or what he looked like?”
I rose up before him solemnly, and stared him full in the face. I was wrought up by that time to a perfect pitch of excitement and interest.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I answered, feeling myself a woman at last, and realising my freedom; “I know and remember no more of it than you do. But from this moment forth, I shall not rest until I’ve found him out and tracked him down, and punished him. I shall never let my head rest in peace on my pillow until I’ve discovered my father’s murderer!”
“That’s well,” the Inspector said sharply, shutting his notes up to go. “If you persevere in that mind, and do as you say, we shall soon get to the bottom of the Woodbury Mystery!”