"Your telling me like that has made it all so difficult. I feel now suddenly as though I hated Carfax and hadn't the least objection to somebody doing for him. And that's all wrong—murder's an awful thing—one ought to feel bad about it." Then finally, with the cry of a child in the dark, "But this isn't life, it never has been life since that day I heard of Carfax being killed. It's the sort of thing—it's been for weeks the sort of thing—that you read of in books or see at the Adelphi; and I'm not that kind of fellow. I tell you I've been mad all this last month, getting it on the brain, seeing things night and day. My one idea was to make you own up to it, but I never thought of what was going to happen when you did."
Olva let him work it out.
"Of course I never thought of you for an instant as the man until that afternoon when you talked in your sleep. Then I began to think and I remembered what Carfax had said about your hating him. Then I went with your dog for a walk and we found your matchbox. After that I noticed all sorts of things and, at the same time, I saw that you were in love with Margaret. That made me mad. My sister is everything in the world to me, and it seemed to me that—she should marry a fellow who . . . without knowing! I began to be ill with it and yet I hadn't any real reasons to bring forward. You wanted me to show my cards, but I wouldn't. Sometimes I thought I really was going mad. Then two things made me desperate. I saw that you had some secret understanding with my mother and I saw—that my sister loved you. We'd always been tremendous pals—we three, and it seemed as though every one were siding against me. I saw Margaret marrying you and mother letting her—although she knew . . . it was awful—Hell!"
He pressed his hands together, his voice shook: "I'd never been in anything before—no kind of trouble—and now it seemed to put me right on one side. I couldn't see straight. One moment I hated you, then I admired you, and the oddest thing of all was that I didn't think about the actual thing—your having killed Carfax—at all; everything else was so much more important. I just wanted to be sure that you'd done it and then—for you to go away and never see any of us again."
Olva smiled.
"Yes," he said.
"But it wasn't until the 5th of November—the 'rag' night—that I was quite sure. I knew then, when I saw you hitting that fellow, that you'd killed Carfax. But, of course, that wasn't proof. Then I noticed Bunning. I saw that he was always with you, and of course it was an odd sort of friendship for you to have; I could see, too, that he'd got something on his mind. I went for him—it was all easy enough—and at last he broke down. Then I'd got you——"
"You've got me," said Olva.
Rupert looked him, slowly, in the face. "You're wonderful!" Then he added, almost wistfully, "If Margaret hadn't loved you it wouldn't really any of it have mattered. I suppose that's very immoral, but that's what it comes to. Margaret's everything in the world to me and you must tell her."
"Of course I will tell her," Olva said. "That's what I ought to have done from the beginning. That's what I was meant to do. But I had to be driven to it. What will you do, Craven, if it doesn't matter to her—if she doesn't care whether I killed Carfax or no?"