“Wait. If they were there on the watch, they saw me leave the house, did they not?”
“Supposedly so.”
“Well, they permitted me to go my way unmolested. If they had received instructions concerning me, they would hardly have done that. No, they were watching and waiting for Turnieff, intending that he should die—intending to kill him. I had no place in that plot. It was hatched—it must have been—without considering me, and only because they deemed it expedient to get him out of the way. He would have been killed just the same—only it would have been a mysterious crime, and no person would have been directly charged with it.”
“I see what you mean.”
“If I had not stopped at that corner, where I remained certainly five minutes if not longer before Turnieff overtook me, he would not have found me at all. I should have gone around the next corner.”
“Perhaps you are right; and yet——”
“Well?”
“It does look to me like the work of that woman’s craft.”
“It looks so on the face of it; yes. But when one stops to analyze it, it does not. She could not have arranged it in the time allowed, even if it had occurred to her—and honestly, I do not think that she knew of the attack that was to be made on Turnieff. It was necessary that she should have known of that in order to have involved me in it.”
“You are defending her, Carter.”