"It's not a lie. It's gospel truth. And Townsend killed her."
Her rejoinder, under ordinary circumstances, might have struck him as an odd one.
"You can't prove it."
"I can prove it. And the police can prove it, too."
Half rising from her chair, she turned to him, every muscle in her body seemed to be quivering with excitement.
"The police? Do they know it?"
"They do. To-morrow the whole world will know it. They've laid hold of the wrong man. They've found it out just before it's a bit too late. They hope to have hold of your friend Townsend soon. They're hoping wrong. His first reckoning will be with me. When that is through, neither he nor I will care who has what's left. Since I have loved you, true and faithful, all these years, I calculated I would come and ask you if, when all is done, you'd give me my reward. We might make a happy ending of it, you and me together, over on the other side. But if you won't, you won't. So I'm through. I've only one word left--good-bye."
He held out his hand to her. So far as she was concerned, it went unheeded. Indeed, it would seem, from the eager question which she asked, that most of what he had been saying had gone unheeded too.
"Are you sure the police are after him? Are you sure?"
He looked at her from under the shadow of his bushy, overhanging eyebrows, in silence, for a moment. Then he said, more in sorrow than in anger--