“Sorry, old man,” was all the apology I could muster. “And if I ever get a chance at the people who did it, you can count on me!”
With a sigh of complete exhaustion, I rose and looked about. All signs of the crime had been obliterated from the garage. “I must be crazy!” I thought, as the enormity of the thing rushed on me. “I wonder why I did it? And I wonder whether I can forget it some day—maybe after twenty years?”
As I opened the door to the garden the dim light was growing clearer. I was late; the girl, coated and hatted, ready for flitting, was already at the rendezvous. At sight of me in my leather togs she started backward; then, resolutely controlled, she drew herself up and faced me silently, her hands clutching at her furs, her lips a little apart.
“Won’t you sit down?” I began lamely, indicating an iron bench. It was all so different from the interview I had planned last night! “I want to speak to you about your chauffeur, Miss Falconer. This morning I found him hurt—very badly hurt—”
She drove straight through my pretense.
“Not dead? Oh, Mr. Bayne, not dead?”
“Yes,” I said gently. “He had been dead some time. I would have liked to take my chances with him; but I came too late. No, please!” She had moved forward, and I was barring her passage. “You mustn’t go. You can’t help him, and you wouldn’t like the sight.”
How black her eyes were in her white face!
“I don’t understand,” she faltered. “You mean that he was murdered? But who would have killed Georges?”
“The men who came last night—if you can call them men. At least, appearances point that way,” I said.