"The newspaper résumé of the affair is quite correct," I said.
"I'd rather hear it from you."
And, in spite of my annoyance, I told it in answer to an appealing glance from Zena. There was nothing I would not have done to please her.
"I'll tell you the story in a different way," said Quarles, when I had finished, "and you can pull me up if I go outside reason. At the beginning of this mystery, four or five years ago, I felt no interest in it; now I am impelled to interfere. True, I have taken no active part in the affair, but with me that is not always necessary. Into my empty brain something has come from outside."
I smiled. There was something of the charlatan in him.
"The body of Peter Judd is found," Quarles went on, "his brother's isn't. Where is it? Down the well? You do not think so, yet by the shred of pajamas and the slipper found there it is desired by someone to suggest this solution. A well can be made to give up its secrets, as a rule, but not this particular well. This is a point in Richard Coleman's favor, since he would not be likely to have any knowledge of local lore; and, if you like, it is against Gilson, who might have such knowledge. But what possible object could he have in laying such a misleading trail?"
"To implicate some other person—the man he had seen join the Judds as he left them."
"I am not combating your theory that two men left the Judds in much the same manner that night, and that the man who gave evidence at the trial was not the one Coleman saw. No doubt Coleman saw Gilson; but do you suggest it was a premeditated crime?"
"No. Gilson was curious about the visitor, and watched; and while he waited Peter Judd went to the well, and Gilson saw the gold. Then desire to possess came to him."
"So he murdered the two men who had been kind to him. Why?" asked Quarles. "During the night he could have broken open the shed and taken the gold. The Judds would undoubtedly have jumped to the conclusion that their nephew had robbed them."