It was perhaps an accident, but she glanced at Lyon. He had not moved. Intensely interested as he was in reaching certain points, he knew that to get the story they must let her tell it in her own way, without interruption.
"I did find him. I had a terrible half hour with him. Oh, he was a man to fear. He was polite and smiling,--and hard as ice. He was not even sarcastic. He did not show any feeling. It was merely a question of money. He said it wasn't pleasant to get money from a woman in this way, but a woman's money was as good as a man's, and since I had money, and since I had put myself in a box where my whole life and reputation were at his mercy, it would be sheer foolishness on his part not to use his opportunity. Those were his very words. Oh, it was right to kill him,--it was right!"
"Grace!" gasped Broughton, half rising. "You don't mean--Good heavens!"
"I didn't kill him," she said, steadily. "But I want you to understand that--that whoever killed him was removing from the earth a cruel, wicked man. I saw I was making no impression on him and I left the Wellington. He was going out that evening, and he accompanied me for a block or two. I told him to leave me, and finally he did. I returned to Miss Elliott's,--"
"Do you know at what hour?" asked Lyon, quickly.
"It was half past eight when I got into my room."
Lyon unconsciously sighed. That statement. If it accorded with the facts, would completely knock out the theory he had cherished so long, based on the assumption that the woman who had fled across the street at ten o'clock was Mrs. Broughton. There was something so convincing in her manner of telling the details of her story that it was very hard to believe she was not presenting the facts truthfully. Yet certainly it was a curious tangle that had mixed her movements on that evening so confusingly with those of Fullerton and of the other woman who had also been entangled with his murder.
"The next morning," she resumed, "I saw the news of his--death in the papers. You cannot imagine my relief. It was as though a terrible weight had been lifted. I wanted to fly. I was wild with joy. Then, just as I was on the point of returning home, came the news of the arrest of Arthur Lawrence. It was a terrible blow. I felt that he had done it for me--because of what I had told him in the morning,--and that I was really guilty not only of Fullerton's death,--I don't think I should have minded that much,--but of Arthur's. My nerves collapsed under the shock and I could not be moved. Gradually, as I saw how little actual proof there was against him, some composure returned. Perhaps, after all, he might not be convicted. No one but myself knew how angry he had been with Mr. Fullerton that day. I was trying, oh, so hard, to get enough of my strength back to get away, to go somewhere, anywhere, when yesterday a man came to see me,--a Mr. Bede."
"What did he come for?"
"What did he want?"