“I saw it in the paper to-night for the first time,” he was saying. “It knocked me dumb. When I think of this houseful of women, and a thing like that occurring!”
Gertrude’s face was still set and white. “That isn’t all, Halsey,” she said. “You and—and Jack left almost at the time it happened. The detective here thinks that you—that we—know something about it.”
“The devil he does!” Halsey’s eyes were fairly starting from his head. “I beg your pardon, Aunt Ray, but—the fellow’s a lunatic.”
“Tell me everything, won’t you, Halsey?” I begged. “Tell me where you went that night, or rather morning, and why you went as you did. This has been a terrible forty-eight hours for all of us.”
He stood staring at me, and I could see the horror of the situation dawning in his face.
“I can’t tell you where I went, Aunt Ray,” he said, after a moment. “As to why, you will learn that soon enough. But Gertrude knows that Jack and I left the house before this thing—this horrible murder—occurred.”
“Mr. Jamieson does not believe me,” Gertrude said drearily. “Halsey, if the worst comes, if they should arrest you, you must—tell.”
“I shall tell nothing,” he said with a new sternness in his voice. “Aunt Ray, it was necessary for Jack and me to leave that night. I can not tell you why—just yet. As to where we went, if I have to depend on that as an alibi, I shall not tell. The whole thing is an absurdity, a trumped-up charge that can not possibly be serious.”
“Has Mr. Bailey gone back to the city,” I demanded, “or to the club?”
“Neither,” defiantly; “at the present moment I do not know where he is.”