"'Perhaps not, sir, but it may be gospel truth for all that. There's no other way I can account for the young woman's carryings on. If Mr. Dunbar was innocent, and had contrived, somehow or other, to convince the young woman of his innocence, why, she'd have come to you free and open, and would have said, 'My dear, I've made a mistake about Mr. Dunbar, and I'm very sorry for it; but we must look somewhere else for my poor pa's murderer.' But what does the young woman do? She goes and scrapes herself along the passage-wall, and shudders and shivers, and says, 'I'm a wretch; don't touch me—don't come near me.' It's just like a woman, to take the bribe, and then be sorry for having taken it.'
"I said nothing in answer to this. It was inexpressibly obnoxious to me to hear my poor Margaret spoken of as 'a young woman' by my business-like companion. But there was no possibility of keeping any veil over the sacred mysteries of my heart. I wanted Mr. Carter's help. For the present Margaret was lost to me; and my only hope of penetrating the hidden cause of her conduct lay in Mr. Carter's power to solve the dark enigma of Joseph Wilmot's death.
"'Oh, by the bye,' exclaimed the detective, 'there was a letter, wasn't there?'
"He held out his hand as I searched for the letter in my pocket-book. What a greedy, inquisitive-looking palm it seemed! and how I hated Mr. Henry Carter, detective officer, at that particular moment!
"I gave him the letter; and I did not groan aloud as I handed it to him. He read it slowly, once, twice, three times—half-a-dozen times, I think, in all—pushing the fingers of his left hand through his hair as he read, and frowning at the paper before him. It was while he was reading the letter for the last time that I saw a sudden glimmer of light in his hard eyes, and a half-smile playing round his thin lips.
"'Well?' I said, interrogatively, as he gave me back the letter.
"'Well, sir, the young lady,'—Mr. Carter called Margaret a young lady this time, and I could not help thinking that her letter had revealed her to him as something different from the ordinary class of female popularly described as a young woman,—'the young lady was in earnest when she wrote that letter, sir,' he said; 'it wasn't written under dictation, and she wasn't bribed to write it. There's heart in it, sir, if I may be allowed the expression: there's a woman's heart in that letter: and when a woman's heart is once allowed scope, a woman's brains shrivel up like so much tinder. I put this letter to that speech in the corridor at the Reindeer, Mr. Austin; and out of those two twos I verily believe I can make the queerest four that was ever reckoned up by a first-class detective.'
"A faint flush, which looked like a glow of pleasure, kindled all over Mr. Carter's sallow face as he spoke, and he got up and walked about the room; not slowly or thoughtfully, but with a brisk eager tread that was new to me. I could see that his spirits had risen a great many degrees since the reading of the letter.
"'You have got some clue,' I said; 'you see your way——'
"He turned round and checked my eager curiosity by a warning gesture of his uplifted hand.