Fyles shook his head.
“She didn’t do it, boy,” he said. “She hadn’t real reason anyway. One time I thought she had. That’s why Danson took the line he did and drove her hard. We fixed him to do that. We guessed that way we’d get further towards the truth. But we didn’t. All we did was to make her see what lay back of her mind the whole time, and she didn’t know it was there. We made her wake to the thing that was real. That she was crazy for the boy she was raised with, and that she was setting a rope about his foolish neck. The result? It was easy. She’s just a woman, a wild, foolish, half-breed woman, all heart an’ hot temper. And she came back as she was bound to come back in the end. She reckoned to undo all she could. She jumped at what the hot head of hers thought was the only way. She played rattled and said she’d killed him herself. And she told the story of it just as Danson had put it up to her, feeling mighty sure no one could deny it. And that’s why you’re sitting around here free. Oh, she did her best to pull the coals from the fire she’d set burning. But there wasn’t a word of truth in it. You see, though Sinclair was crooked around women he wasn’t a darn fool. With his game half-played he wouldn’t have turned her down. That would have come later—when you were in penitentiary. Annette didn’t take your gun there. She just found it.”
The Wolf was gazing hungrily. His cigarette was forgotten. Everything was forgotten while he learned that truth which had set him stumbling blindly into a hideous pitfall. Annette had not killed her lover. A crazy gladness surged. But almost on the instant came reaction. If Annette were innocent of the crime then how did Sinclair come by his death?
The Wolf remained gazing at the man in the chair as though fascinated. Something was hammering in his brain. It was something that drove him blindly, headlong; and Fyles was watching. He saw the flush mount suddenly to cheeks and brow. He saw the queer light that flashed into the man’s eyes. So he waited.
The Wolf seemed to gulp, swallowing with difficulty.
“That’s why she wasn’t set in the cells?” he asked thickly.
Fyles shook his head and further clouded the atmosphere.
“You saved her that.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You said she was lying. You told us how you shot Sinclair.”