"Things happen swiftly and unexpectedly," said he. "Perhaps she did not know it then."
"And perhaps she did not know Locke or his whereabouts, either," said Pendleton, with bitter irony.
"Who knows?" replied Ashton-Kirk, composedly. "At any rate, it was just a supposition that led to my labors of to-day."
"I don't think I understand," said Pendleton, after a moment.
"Last night," said the investigator, "you asked me if I had learned anything from Professor Locke. And I replied to the effect that I thought I had. Now," after a pause, devoted to the grateful smoke, "when one sees a girl circumstanced as Miss Vale assuredly is in this case, paying a secret visit to a man who is rather more than suspected of the murder, what does one suppose?"
"That she is leagued with him, somehow," replied Pendleton, reluctantly.
"Exactly. But on the other hand, when the same girl, upon sight of us, rushes off and leaves the man to face us without giving him a hint as to who we are, what does one suppose?"
But Pendleton rose gloomily and strode over to the window.
"I don't know," said he.
"One supposes," proceeded Ashton-Kirk, "that she has not much interest in him." Here Pendleton faced about again. "If she had been leagued with him, as you put it, you may be sure that she would have managed to warn him in some way as to our identity. But that she had not done so, the mute's manner told me as plainly as words could have done. Seeing this, I began figuring what it meant. If she was not associated with Locke in the crime, why was she there? Immediately came the answer—through Morris. But, when I saw her last, she denied any knowledge of Morris's whereabouts. Then I reasoned, she had seen him in the interim."