"What did he mean about an ex-convict?" Jean asked in a shocked voice. "Not Mr. Fellows? And what would he have to do with it?"
"Nothing," I said promptly, putting certain uncomfortable recollections out of my mind. "Don't you see that Mr. Garney was merely deceiving you? He had nothing to tell, no help to give you. He merely wanted to marry you. Jean, Jean! How could you do so mad a thing?"
"For Gene!" she said reproachfully. "Why, I'd do anything. And Mr. Garney said he surely would tell me when we were married, and if I cared for Gene I would do it. He wouldn't tell me beforehand, because he--he doesn't like you!" She dropped her eyes in delicious confusion. "You see, he is--jealous of you! He didn't want me to wear this!" She touched the locket she wore on a chain about her neck,--the locket I had given her just before leaving Saintsbury.
"How did he know I had given you the locket?" I asked.
"I don't know. He just guessed." She looked shy and conscious--and charming. But something puzzled me.
"You didn't tell him? You are sure of that?"
"Why, yes," she said, looking surprised. "I never told anybody. Not anybody at all. It was a kind of a--secret."
How do ideas come to us? I thought I was wholly absorbed in Jean, and was conscious merely of a desire to soothe and calm her by taking things naturally, but now something seemed to nudge my attention and to urge, "Don't you see what that means? Don't you see? Don't you see?"
I did see--in a flash. That locket! It had not been out of my locked desk until I gave it to Jean, except once,--the night of Barker's murder. I had taken it to Mrs. Whyte's that evening, and had shown the portrait to Miss Thurston for a minute. I was sure she had not even seen the outside of the case, which was out of my hand but a moment. But later that evening, while I sat in Barker's office waiting, I had taken the locket from my pocket and had sat under the gaslight examining it--in full view of the concealed murderer who had watched me from the dark inner room, and who, a few minutes later, shot Barker from that same concealment. The whole thing flashed before my mind.
"Wait here," I said, and dashed for the door by which Garney had left. He was a block away, evidently waiting for a street car which I could see approaching.