"I wish you would let me know when I may safely call upon her."
"That won't be for some time yet. What do you want to see her about?"
"She entrusted me with a commission. I want to report upon it."
"She probably won't remember it when she recovers. I don't consider that she was really responsible for what she may have said or done yesterday. She has had some sort of nervous shock that has shaken her entirely out of the normal. It will take a long time before she is herself."
"When did she call you in?" Lyon asked abruptly.
"Tuesday afternoon. Why?"
"Oh, I just wondered how you came to know so much. Good-by."
He went away with a sense of bafflement. That Mrs. Broughton was in some way connected with the tragedy, and that the nervous shock from which she suffered dated from that evening, seemed to have been made so patent that he had all the eagerness of the hunter to run the facts down. And yet to do so under the present circumstances was almost brutal. How could he raise a breath of suspicion against a woman who was trembling on the verge of mental derangement as a consequence of what he had seen or had possibly had a share in? And yet if the truth would serve to clear two innocent people from suspicion, could he justify himself in not speaking? More and more he felt inclined to entertain the idea that the woman he had seen running across the street was Mrs. Broughton. If he could but establish this as a fact and so clear Lawrence's mind of the conviction that it was Miss Wolcott, he felt that Lawrence would probably be able to clear himself of the shadow under which he rested without difficulty. Brutal or not, he must get the facts,--quietly if possible, but he must get them. It would be more brutal to let the innocent suffer than to fix the crime upon the guilty, however sympathetic he might feel toward the latter. He determined to go quietly on and gather what information he could without at present sharing his suspicions with anyone. With this end in view he went to the Wellington, Fullerton's home.
He hunted up the elevator boy in the first place, and soon established a thoroughly satisfactory understanding with him on the basis of some theater tickets.
"Now I want to see how good a memory you have, Johnny. You know that lady who came to see Mr. Fullerton that evening,--"