“I would not have cried out then if I could have done so,” she said, “for it was too late. I knew that Ramon was dead. I saw you replace his head back against the cushion of the chair. I saw that you smoothed his coat, as if to obliterate any traces you might have left there of the crime you had committed. I saw you hold up the cork handle of the instrument you had used, and I saw that it was empty—that the terrible needle was gone from it. I saw you take it back to the desk and drop it again into the casket where you kept it, and then I fled to my room, entered it, locked the door, and fell into a swoon from which I did not recover until the sun was shining into my room. Then I dressed and came out here. I steeled myself to act the part you saw me play, but when you went into the house, taking your friend with you to visit the scene of your crime, it was too much for me. I ran here to the arbor, and then—then I opened my eyes and found you beside me.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE MAN ON THE COUCH.
Mercedes Danton was not only herself convinced that her brother was a murderer, but she had convinced him of his own guilt. Doubtful at first, and yet half-believing that he might have unconsciously committed the act which deprived Ramon Orizaba of life, and later, aided by the reasoning of the detective, assured that he could not have killed him without knowing it, he was now thrown back into a worse condition of mind than ever, for here was one—his own beloved and loving sister—who saw him do the deed.
When she ceased speaking, his mind seemed to drift into a stupor from which he was aroused a moment later by feeling a heavy hand on his shoulder.
It was Nick Carter who touched him, and Mercedes discovered the presence of “Mr. Parsons” at the same instant.
She leaped to her feet and confronted him with flashing eyes, for sorrow gave place to anger, and all the maternal instinct of woman, which is aroused quite as thoroughly in the heart of a sister when she is fighting for a brother as for a mother when she fights for a child—all that wonderful fighting and enduring quality with which God has endowed womankind, rose up within her to battle against the peril in which she believed her brother stood at that instant when his secret became the property of a third person.
“You heard me!” she gasped. “You heard everything that I said?”
“Yes,” said Nick. “I heard everything;” but the kindly look in his eyes and the subdued voice in which he spoke convinced her that, at least, he was not immediately to be feared, and she sank back upon the bench and buried her face in her hands again.
Suddenly she raised her head and with a quick motion leaned toward him.
“You—you knew about it—before,” she whispered tentatively.