Beard faced his inquisitor, trying to meet his steady gaze with equal steadiness. But the consciousness that he was in a serious predicament, that he might be compelled to meet a serious charge, made him waver. He was struggling furiously to maintain his composure, but his inward excitement reacted on his outer frame, rendering him speechless. When, finally, he found his voice, he turned an appealing glance on the detective.
"She did commit suicide," he declared as if protesting his innocence before a hostile judge. "I delivered the letter which you have in your pocket. She read it, then crumpled it in her hand and threw it on the floor.
"'Mr. Beard,' she said, 'I've betrayed George to the police. I have denounced him as the murderer. They have my statement. They'll send George to the electric chair. I told them all I knew.'
"I informed her that her statement to the police was not competent evidence and that unless she repeated her testimony in court, it could not be used against Collins.
"'They'll never make me repeat it!' she exclaimed. Opening a drawer of the writing table she produced a pistol and before I was able to interfere, the weapon exploded and she was dead. My account of the suicide is absolutely true," he declared impressively,—"I swear it is true."
His face now was as solemn as the tone in which he had uttered the last sentence. Beard recognized that he was facing a grave moment in his life, that it was within the power of the man to whom he had spoken, irretrievably to mar his future, to stain him with an accusation which, even though disproved before a jury, he could never hope to live down entirely.
The harrowing fear and uncertainty written in the secretary's face, produced no quiver of compassion in the detective. Britz was measuring the man with cool, calculating eyes, that shone in their sockets like balls of chilled steel. Long ago he had learned to turn an indifferent ear to protestations of innocence. Such pleas drop with equal fervor from the lips of the innocent and the guilty. And the shrewdest judge of human nature is incapable of judging between them.
"I am innocent—before God I swear it!" cries the guilty wretch in a voice calculated to wring tears from the Accusing Spirit itself.
"I am innocent—before God I swear it!" protests the wrongfully accused person despairingly.
The experienced detective, or prosecutor, or judge, places as much faith in the protestation of the one as in the other. He reserves judgment until sufficient evidence shall have been developed to establish which of the accused is telling the truth. For, he knows that while the guilty man's lie may sound entirely plausible, it will collapse like a perforated gas-bag in the end. Likewise, truth coming from the innocent man's lips may be utterly lacking in plausibility. Yet, it will establish itself by reason of its own indestructible qualities.