And the girl thought: "He knew before now that these things were missing. His acting would deceive every man, but not every woman. How glad I am that I drew him on!"
Now, though the fact of the discovery of the celt by Inspector Clarke under the dead actress's piano had not been published in the papers, the fact that she had been stabbed through the eye by a long blade with blunt edges was known to all the world. There was nothing strange in this fierce outburst of Osborne's trusted secretary, nor that tears should spring to her eyes.
"Mr. Furneaux, he is innocent," she wailed in a frenzy. "Oh, he is! You noticed me hesitate just now to bring you in here: well, this was the reason—this, this, this——" she tapped with her forefinger on the empty hole—"for I knew that you would see this, and I knew that you would be jumping to some terrible conclusion as to Mr. Osborne."
"Conclusion, no," murmured Furneaux comfortingly—"I avoid conclusions as traps for the unwary. Interesting, of course, that's all. Tell me what you know, and fear nothing. Conclusion, you say! I don't jump to conclusions. Tell me what was the shape of the dagger that has disappeared."
She was silent again for many seconds. She was wrung with doubt, whether to speak or not to speak.
At last she voiced her agony.
"Either I must refuse to say, or I must tell the truth—and if I tell the truth, you will think——"
She stopped again, all her repose of manner fled.
"You don't know what I will think," put in Furneaux. "Sometimes I think the most unexpected things. The best way is to give me the plain facts. The question is, whether the blade that has gone from there was shaped like the one supposed to have committed the crime in the flat?"
"It was labeled 'Saracen Stiletto: about 1150,'" muttered the girl brokenly, looking Furneaux straight in the face, though the fire was now dead in her eyes. "It had a square bone handle, with a crescent carved on one of the four faces—a longish, thin blade, like a skewer, only not round—with blunt-edged corners to it."