“She did not.” Craige, his tongue unloosened, spoke in desperate haste, his words tripping over one another. It seemed almost as if he gained courage from the sound of his own voice. “Miss Susan Baird was warned—but she would not listen to me.”
“Why did you kill my aunt?” demanded Kitty, indignation for the moment mastering her horror. “She was always kind to you. She trusted you.”
“Trust? It was greed which prompted her friendship.” Craige laughed harshly, jeeringly. “It was by my aid that she made her fortune. Do you know what she was—your aristocratic aunt—a money-lender!”
Kitty stared at him—appalled. “It can’t be,” she cried, and turned appealingly to Ted Rodgers. “Make him tell the truth.”
“I am speaking the truth,” Craige retorted. “Many’s the person I’ve brought over here when you, Kitty, were not around, and your aunt has admitted us at that side door. She charged high rates of interest, but no one gave her away. She was square with them.”
“Were you square with her?” asked Rodgers quietly, and a dull red suffused Craige’s white face.
“When I had to borrow, she treated me like the others,” he answered. “The fact that I helped her amass a fortune cut no ice. I got deeper and deeper in debt, and then—” his voice changed. “I had to have money, so I told her I wanted to marry you.”
Kitty retreated, aghast. “Marry me? You!”
“Yes,” coolly. “I am only fifty-four; there is not such a difference in our ages. I saw your aunt on Sunday about six o’clock. She laughed at me and refused to consent to our marriage.” Beads of perspiration had again gathered on his forehead, but he went steadily on with his story, oblivious apparently of the abhorrence with which his companions were regarding him. “I had forged Miss Susan Baird’s name in my desperation last week. I knew that if Kitty and I were married quickly, she would keep quiet about the forgery for her family’s sake. When she laughed my plan to scorn, I realized there was only one thing to do—to kill her.”
“How did you go about it?” asked Mitchell.