“Dick,” she advised quietly, but with underlying urgency in her gently spoken words, “don't talk, please.”
Burke laughed harshly.
“What do you expect?” he inquired truculently. “As a matter of fact, the thing's simple enough, young man. Either you killed Griggs, or she did.”
The Inspector, with his charge, made a careless gesture toward the corpse of the murdered stool-pigeon. For the first time, Edward Gilder, as his glance unconsciously followed the officer's movement, looked and saw the ghastly inanimate heap of flesh and bone that had once been a man. He fairly reeled at the gruesome spectacle, then fumbled with an outstretched hand as he moved stumblingly until he laid hold on a chair, into which he sank helplessly. It suddenly smote upon his consciousness that he felt very old and broken. He marveled dully over the sensation—it was wholly new to him. Then, soon, from a long way off, he heard the strident voice of the Inspector remorselessly continuing in the vile, the impossible accusation.... And that grotesque accusation was hurled against his only son—the boy whom he so loved. The thing was monstrous, a thing incredible. This whole seeming was no more than a chimera of the night, a phantom of bad dreams, with no truth under it.... Yet, the stern voice of the official came with a strange semblance of reality.
“Either you killed him,” the voice repeated gratingly, “or she did. Well, then, young man, did she kill him?”
“Good God, no!” Dick shouted, aghast.
“Then, it was you!” Such was the Inspector's summary of the case.
Mary's words came frantically. Once again, she was become desperate over the course of events in this night of fearful happenings.
“No, no! He didn't!”
Burke's rasping voice reiterated the accusation with a certain complacency in the inevitability of the dilemma.