Ferguson stepped forward. “It would be best, Major, if you did,” he suggested. “That is a bit of friendly advice.”
“Thanks,” dryly. “Had you not better warn me that anything I say will be used against me?”
Hale chuckled, then grew serious. “Come, John, what does this scene mean?” he demanded of his brother. “What are you trying to prove?”
“That Major Richards has a guilty knowledge of, or is guilty of, Austin’s murder,” he replied, and at his words a cry broke from Mrs. Hale and she collapsed in the nearest chair.
Richards looked at John Hale in silence for a brief second.
“So that is it,” he exclaimed. “I congratulate you on your acumen. Now, perhaps you will tell me why I murdered a man whom I had never seen?”
“Oh, don’t say that, don’t,” wailed Mrs. Hale. “I found your name in Austin’s membership book of his Senior secret society at Yale.”
Richards regarded her in surprise. “Certainly my name is in the book; but I graduated at Yale before Austin’s freshman year.”
John Hale smothered an oath. “Whether you knew Austin or not is immaterial. When a man is caught in the act of burglarizing a safe he doesn’t need an introduction to the man who detects him—he kills him—as you murdered Austin.”
Richards shrugged his shoulder. “You will have it that way,” he spoke with studied indifference, as he again stole a look about the room—where was Judith? “Has it ever occurred to you that Austin might have been rifling Mr. Hale’s safe and was killed in the act—”