"Precisely. And you, having seen to what lengths his murderous fury could take him, were afraid to face him—even after your long, long search had located him again. Let's be sensible, Mrs. Brace. Let's give the facts of this business a hearing.
"You had come to Washington and located him at last. But, after receiving several demands from you, he'd stopped reading your letters—sent them back unopened. Consequently, in order for you to make an appointment with him, he had to be communicated with in a handwriting he didn't know. Hence, your daughter had to write the letter making that appointment a week ago last night. Then, however——"
"What makes you think——"
"Then, however," he concluded, overbearing her with his voice, "you hadn't the courage to face him—out there, in the dark, alone. You persuaded Mildred to go—in your place. And he killed her."
"Ha!" The mocking exclamation sounded as though it had been pounded out of her by a blow upon her back. "What makes you say that? Where do you get that? Who put that into your head?"
She volleyed those questions at him with indescribable rapidity, her lips drawn back from her teeth, her brows straining far up toward the line of her hair. The profound disgust with which he viewed her did not affect her. She darted to and fro in her mind, running about in the waste and tumult of her momentary confusion, seeking the best thing to say, the best policy to adopt, for her own ends.
He had had time to determine that much when her gift of self-possession reasserted itself. She forced her lips back to their thin line, and steadied herself. He could see the vibrant tautness of her whole body, exemplified in the rigidity with which she held her crossed knees, one crushed upon the other.
"I know, I think, what misled you," she answered her own question. "You've talked to Gene Russell, of course. He may have heard—I think he did hear—Mildred and me discussing the mailing of a letter that Friday night."
"He did," Hastings said, firmly.