“Yes, the woman was your cousin, Miss Gargrave.”
“My dear fellow,” cried Rayner, breaking into discordant laughter. “You surely are not going to charge Joy with shooting Koona Dick?”
The corporal was not disturbed by the laughter. To his ears it sounded forced, and the contemptuous protest in his companion’s words left him unmoved.
“There is one little thing that I have not told you, Mr. Rayner, and to me it seems to be significant. Miss Gargrave carried a rifle.”
“There is nothing strange or even significant in that,” replied the other quickly. “My cousin is an ardent sportswoman, and had probably been after game. Besides, as I told you, I think, there are timber wolves about. They are dangerous beasts in hard weather, and one does not go far unarmed in this district.”
Corporal Bracknell answered these suggestions by some of his own. “Miss Gargrave was running down the path which led to this spot. To my eyes she was plainly distraught, and I may remind you that she fainted when I told you that Koona Dick was dead.”
Rayner laughed again hardly. “You are persistent, Corporal, but there is nothing in a girl fainting when she is told rather dramatically that a man has been shot dead almost at her own door. Aren’t you a little imaginative? Indeed,” he laughed again, “having heard a rifle shot have you not imagined all the rest? I am told that a lonely trail plays the deuce with a man’s nerves. You say that you saw Koona Dick lying here, dead; but he is not here—now, and he can’t—”
“I haven’t imagined that anyhow,” interrupted Bracknell, pointing to the dark stain on the snow, “and I haven’t imagined any of the other things I have told you, either. Believe me, Mr. Rayner, my nerves are in perfect order.”
Rayner stamped his feet in the snow. “Possibly! But there is no need that we should freeze, whilst we discuss the point, is there? I do not understand police procedure, but if you have quite finished here, I think we might return to the house. I have no desire to lose my toes through frost-bite.”
“I can do nothing here, tonight,” replied Bracknell quickly. “I shall have to wait until morning. I am quite ready to return.”