“Prisoner!” Mrs. Hale started from her chair. “Robert—”
Robert Hale stepped forward. “Sit down, Agatha.” He pushed her gently back in her chair before turning to Ferguson. “Who swore out that warrant?”
“Your brother, Mr. John Hale.”
“So”—Hale faced his brother. “Have you forgotten our conversation early this afternoon?”
“I have not.” John Hale shouldered Latimer to one side as he stepped nearer the center of the room. “You tried to fasten Austin’s murder on an innocent girl to shield your daughter’s husband.”
“An innocent girl!” Hale’s mocking smile brought his brother’s rage to fever heat. “So innocent that when she quarreled with her lover at their midnight meeting she killed him with her shears—shears which I had bought for her the week before.” Swiftly he turned to Ferguson. “Release Major Richards and arrest the real criminal, Polly Davis.”
An oath broke from John Hale, and in blind fury he twirled his walking stick. His brother, by a dexterous twist only, avoided the thrust. As the steel point of the sword cane came to rest directly under the powerful light from a standing reading lamp, a scream escaped Mrs. Hale.
“Look, look!” she cried. “It’s covered with blood.”
CHAPTER XIX
THE UNSEEN EAR
As if hypnotized, John Hale stared at his sword cane, raising it slowly, very slowly, then as slowly dropped the point and gazed at his brother.