"Why, I—I made up my mind to cut my stick—let whoever it was pass me on the stairs, you know. But he followed me and struck me, and then I jumped at him, and we both fell down the whole flight. And that's all. Besides, my head's achin' like everything."
"But this man—?"
Mrs. Hallam looked up at Kirkwood, who bowed silently, struggling to hide both his amusement and perplexity. More than ever, now, the case presented a front inscrutable to his wits; try as he might, he failed to fit an explanation to any incident in which he had figured, while this last development—that his antagonist of the dark stairway had been Mrs. Hallam's son!—seemed the most astounding of all, baffling elucidation completely.
He had abandoned all thought of flight and escape. It was too late; in the brisk idiom of his mother-tongue, he was "caught with the goods on." "May as well face the music," he counseled himself, in resignation. From what he had seen and surmised of Mrs. Hallam, he shrewdly suspected that the tune would prove an exceedingly lively one; she seemed a woman of imagination, originality, and an able-bodied temper.
"You, Mr. Kirkwood!"
Again he bowed, grinning awry.
She rose suddenly. "You will be good enough to explain your presence here," she informed him with dangerous serenity.
"To be frank with you—"
"I advise that course, Mr. Kirkwood."
"Thanks, awf'ly.... I came here, half an hour ago, looking for a lost purse full—well, not quite full of sovereigns. It was my purse, by the way."