"But remember," he warned; "that's why he went out. We still don't know what he—what happened after he got out there—or why he's refused to say that he ever was out there. When we think of this, and other things, and, too, his call tonight on Mrs. Brace, for bribery—leaving what we thought was a sickbed—"
"But he's been up all day!" she corrected.
"And yet," he said, and stopped, reflecting.
"Tell me," she implored; "tell me, Mr. Hastings, do you suspect my father—or not—of the——?"
He answered her unfinished question with a solemn, painstaking care:
"Miss Sloane, you're not one who would want to be misled. You can bear the truth. I'd be foolish to say that he's not under suspicion. He is. Any one of the men there that night may have committed the murder. Webster, your father, Wilton—only there, suspicion seems totally gratuitous—Eugene Russell, Jarvis—I've heard things about him—any one of them may have struck that blow—may have."
"And father," she said, in a grieved bewilderment, "has paid Mrs. Brace to stop saying she suspects Berne," she shuddered, facing the alternative, "or himself!"
"You see," he framed the conclusion for her, "how hard he makes it for us to keep him out of trouble—if that gets out. He's put his hand on the live wire of circumstantial evidence, a wire that too often thrashes about, striking the wrong man."
"And Berne?" she cried out. "I think I could stand anything if only I knew——"
But this time the mutinous sobs came crowding past her lips. She could not finish the inquiry she had begun.