With uncertain steps she felt her way along the lunch counter.
"Not—not an officer?" she faltered. "Why, what do you mean, sir?"
"Just what I say, madam. What's more, I know that Bart's sudden taking makes you a sure-enough widow, instead of a pretended one. You have my deepest sympathy, Mrs. Caswell."
To himself, Seymour justified his seeming harshness of utterance on grounds of professional necessity; that there might be real mercy for the woman also involved, in case he succeeded in breaking through her reserve, was another consideration. Everything depended upon her reaction to this "shot" assertion. He had followed her on a hunch bred of her emotions at the imposter's bier. Old man Cato had given him a plausible reason for her showing of grief. While studying her when she stood over the range, however, the idea had come to him that she had been Bart Caswell's wife. He was prepared to be shown that the woman herself was not a criminal, even by inclination. In fact, he was predisposed to believe that she would prove essentially honest.
"You're wrong, stranger—wrong on both counts!" the woman replied. She had steadied herself, was forcing her voice to hold an even tone. Seymour could not yet be sure that his hunch was right.
"Mr. Seymour was a staff-sergeant," she went on. "The coward that murdered him will learn that to his sorrow when Russell's mates come from headquarters to avenge his death. As for my being his widow——" She essayed a little laugh that was almost too much a strain upon her histrionic powers. "I'm not saying what might have come to pass had not death stepped in; but as it stands, he was just a brave friend and a good-paying boarder."
A moment the sergeant merely stared at her; then he leaned along the counter toward her. "You'd like to see your brave friend's slayer punished, wouldn't you?"
A flash of fury lit her worn face; her teeth clicked ominously and her small, work-roughened hands clinched.
"I'd give the world if it were mine and count it well spent!" she cried. "If ever I find out who—" She checked herself, evidently fearing that she was going too far in behalf of a "brave friend and a good-paying boarder."
"Then tell me all you can about Bart, his recent movements and what he had planned for the future," urged Seymour quietly. "I'm here to get the man who killed him, Mrs. Caswell."