"I have been looking for a murdered man," he said.
Her eyes fixed themselves on his face in wondering horror.
"That ain't a very lively sort of occupation," she said, after a pause, still keeping up that assumption of gay indifference. "I hope the party wasn't a near relation."
"No; he was not of my blood, nor of yours; but he was bound to you by every link that should make a man's life sacred. He was bound to you body and soul, and you helped to murder him."
"Oh, my God!" she cried; "oh, my God! Man alive, don't talk to me like that. Take the poker and smash my head open; but don't talk like that!"
"I must. I pity you, but I can't spare you. It is my trade to drag secret crimes into the light of day."
"You're a detective," she cried. "Oh, you paltry cad, you hypocrite, you coward, to come hanging about me and pretending to be my friend."
"I'll be the best friend you ever had, if you'll give me the chance. Come now, Mrs. Randall; your life's been a misery to you ever since that night by Southampton Water."
Her terrified gaze widened as he spoke. She looked at him as if a spirit of supernatural omniscience, a Nemesis in human form, were before her.
"If this bad business had never come to light, if nobody had ever come to know how Colonel Rannock was murdered, if Bolisco had never been brought to book——"