"But just as I got the door open I heard a shot fired from the side of the house. I hurried around there, and when I reached the spot from which the sound had come, I found just what I feared—a man lying dead under the window. I thought, of course, that it was the patient who had killed himself in a mania, as he had threatened to do. Filled with horror at the idea of leaving him there alone and uncovered in the storm, I ran back to the living-room, picked up the first thing at hand (an Indian blanket), and threw it over him. Then I hurried to the nearest house, about a mile away, and gave the alarm.
"Believing that it was my husband's neglect that had caused the tragedy, my purpose was to find him and get his version of the story before I betrayed him. So I furnished no further information to the authorities in town save that Roger Kenwick, the inmate of Rest Hollow, had committed suicide. I really knew nothing else about it but that bare fact.
"But that night I discovered, when I reached Mont-Mer, that my husband had been killed in an auto accident while coming out from the depot. I went to the morgue and identified his body, ordered the remains to be shipped north for interment, and left, unknown to any one, on the late northbound train. The undertaker told me that there had been no other victim of the tragedy, so I reasoned that the story which Mr. Kenwick had told me about a sprained leg was true, after all, that he had been injured in the catastrophe and had, by a curious freak of chance, found his way back alone to the very place that was awaiting him and in which he had been living for the preceding ten months."
Dayton declared himself satisfied with the testimony and turned the witness over to the prosecution. The district attorney had recovered his interest. "Mrs. Marstan," he said, groping for his glasses, "can you produce a certificate of marriage to Dr. Marstan?"
"I cannot. Important papers, including that, were among the few things that I took to Rest Hollow in November, and you have been informed that the place is completely destroyed."
"That will do."
She stepped down from the stand, and for the first time her eyes rested upon the prisoner. In them was an expression that would have given him new courage had he seen it, but Roger Kenwick sat motionless as a statue, his gaze fixed immutably upon the floor. It was only when the name of the next witness was called that he came back to a sense of his surroundings. "Call Granville Jarvis."
Dayton surveyed the Southerner sharply before he put his first question. "You are the detective whom Richard Glover employed in San Francisco to shadow the prisoner?"
"I am."
"How long were you in Mr. Glover's employ?"