But Furneaux did not mean to allow Hylda Prout to regain the marvelous self-possession which had been imperiled by the events of the past minute.
"While we are waiting for Campbell and the girl you may as well learn the really material thing that condemns you," he said, whispering in her ear with quiet menace. "You ought to have destroyed that gray suit which you purchased from a second-hand clothes dealer. It was a deadly mistake to keep those blood-stained garments. The clothes Osborne wore have been produced long since. They were soiled by you two days after the murder, a fact which I can prove by half a dozen witnesses. Those which you wore to-night, which you are wearing now, are spotted with your victim's blood. I know, because I have seen them in your lodgings, and they can be identified beyond dispute by the man who sold them to you."
Suddenly he raised his voice.
"Winter! Quick! She has the strength of ten women!"
For Hylda Prout, hearing those fateful words, was seized with a fury of despair. She had peered into Furneaux's eyes and seen there the pitiless purpose which had filled his every waking moment since his wife's untimely death. Love and hate had conspired to wreck her life. They had mastered her at last. From being their votary she had become their victim. An agonizing sigh came from her straining breast. She was fighting like a catamount, while Winter held her shoulders and Furneaux her wrists; then she collapsed between them, and a thin red stream issued from her lips.
They carried her to the sofa on which she had lain when for the first and only time in her life those same red lips had met Rupert Osborne's.
Winter hurried to the door, and sent Campbell, coming on tiptoe across the hall, flying in his taxi for a doctor. But Furneaux did not move from her side. He gazed down at her with something of the judge, something of the executioner, in his waxen features.
"All heart!" he muttered, "all heart, controlled by a warped brain!"
"She has broken a blood vessel," said Winter.
"No; she has broken her heart," said Furneaux, hearing, though apparently not heeding him.