“I am.”
“Then you must be aware that cutting a man’s throat is a difficult operation.” Noyes spoke slowly, impressively. “According to the newspaper accounts which I read, Brainard’s throat was cut from right to left, and that he was found lying on the right side of the bed; therefore, if such was the case, the wound must have been inflicted by a right-handed man.”
“Do you mean to claim as your defense that you are left-handed?” demanded Mitchell.
“No, not originally left-handed.” Noyes threw back the officer’s cape which he still wore, and disclosed an empty coat sleeve pinned across his chest. “I left my right arm on a battlefield of France,” he added.
There was a long silence broken by a scream from the hall. Springing to his feet Mitchell darted through the open door and down the hall, Noyes and Thorne at his heels. All three paused at sight of Millicent Porter on the lower step of the staircase.
“My papers!” she gasped. “Someone has stolen my papers!”
Noyes’ left arm supported her as she staggered and almost fell. Thorne, standing somewhat in the background, whistled low at sight of the Englishman’s expression as he bent above Millicent.
“So—the red herring across the trail,” he muttered below his breath, and started violently at finding Vera Deane at his elbow.
CHAPTER XIV
PRO AND CON
THE dining-room at Thornedale Lodge looked particularly cozy in the soft lamplight, and old black Cato, surveying the room, could not repress a smile of subdued gratification. He considered himself “one ob de fam’ly,” and it was doubtful if even Beverly Thorne had as great an affection for his ancestral home as did the old man who in his youth had been a slave on the Thorne plantation. Year in and year out he had worked on the place, being advanced from field hand to house servant in the early days following the Civil War, and when the fortunes of the Thornes were at the lowest ebb he had worked without wages so as to help “Old Miss” educate her boy, Beverly, and keep the homestead from going under the hammer. Illiterate, kindly, faithful, Cato epitomized the spirit of the old-style darky, to whose watchful care Southern men had not feared to leave their wives and children when they went to fight with Robert Lee.