"Ah, you see you did believe that what I told you proved his guilt——"
"Hear me.... No, I did not believe that. But—you had impressed me with the fact that Mr. Osborne has been, may have been, already sufficiently successful in attracting the sympathies of young ladies. I had been at the inquest—I had seen there in the box his exquisite secretary, of whose perfect ways of acting you gave me some knowledge that day, and I thought it might be rash of me to seem to be in rivalry with so charming a lady. Now you see my motive—I am often frank. So, when you were gone, I sent the telegram forbidding the reading of my letter; and the next morning I received a very brief note from Mr. Osborne saying that the letter was awaiting my wishes unopened."
"How did he know your address, if he did not open the letter?" asked Furneaux.
Rosalind started like a child caught in a fault. She was so agitated that she had not asked herself that question. As a matter of fact, it was Hylda Prout, having tracked Rosalind from Waterloo, who had given Osborne the address for her own reasons: Hylda had told Osborne, on hearing his fretful exclamation of annoyance, that she knew the address of a Miss Marsh from an old gentleman who had apparently come up from Tormouth with him and her, and had called to see Osborne when Osborne was out.
"He got the address from some source, I don't know what," Rosalind said, with a rather wondering gaze at Furneaux's face; "but the point is, that the girl, Pauline, saw my letter to him, and the telegram; and last night, coming home from an outing in quite a broken-down and enfeebled state, she said to me with tears in her eyes: 'Oh, he is innocent! Oh, do not judge him harshly, Miss Marsh! Oh, it was not he who did it!' and much more of that sort. Then she collapsed and began to scream and kick, was got to bed, and a doctor sent for, who said that she had an attack of neurasthenia due to mental strain. And I was sitting by her bedside quite a long while, so that I might then—if I had known—But I think she is better to-day."
"It is not too late, if she is still in bed," said Furneaux. "Sit with her again till she is asleep, and then see if the trunk is unlocked, or if you can find the key——"
"Only it doesn't seem quite fair to——"
"Oh, quite, in this case, I assure you," said Furneaux. "Whether this girl committed that murder with her own hand or not——"
"But how could she? She was at an Exhibition——!"
"Was she? Are you sure? I was saying that whether the girl committed the murder with her own hand or not——"