Daffy Halliwell glanced at both men and uttered a queer laugh.
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I’m certain of that!”
“Why, now?” asked the Professor, speaking for the first time since the beginning of the conversation. “Why are you certain?”
Daffy turned her regard more particularly to the second questioner. After looking carefully at him for a full minute, she spoke.
“You look as if you’d understand—whoever you are,” she said suddenly. “And that you’re a policeman—plain-clothes or otherwise—I don’t believe! I’m certain Jim Roper didn’t kill Guy Markenmore, because if he had he’s just the man to have let it be known that he’d had his revenge! He wouldn’t have cared twopence if they’d hanged him next day!”
Blick exchanged another word or two with Daffy as to Roper’s exact location, and he and his companion went off. The Professor marched along in silence for awhile.
“That woman possesses a power of keen insight into character,” he remarked at last. “She’d make a useful member of your force, Blick! I’m sure she’s quite right in what she said just now. A man of the sort she described, who’d nursed his desire for revenge all these years, wouldn’t care very much who knew that he’d satisfied it at last. For him, you see, it would be the end!—all else would be nothing.”
“What about self-preservation?” suggested Blick.
“I don’t think he’d be at all careful about that,” replied the Professor thoughtfully. “No!—the woman’s intuition is right. I think we must acquit this man Roper. A much-wronged man, too, evidently. I’m curious to see him.”
“I daresay we shall soon find him,” said Blick. “He’ll be somewhere in the woods.”