“What do you mean?” she demanded. “I don’t know what you are talking about, with your miserable innuendoes.”
Martin’s face paled.
“Innuendoes!” he burst out, losing his temper; “then I’ll speak plainly, since you demand it! Since when, Miss Barrington, have you made a practice of shielding—murderers?”
He regretted the word the instant it had left his lips, but he forced himself to meet Miss Barrington’s horrified gaze unflinchingly.
“Murderer!” she gasped. “Hustler Joe was no murderer!”
At that moment Mr. Barrington re-entered the room and Martin turned to him in relief. Five minutes later he had made his adieus and left the house.
XV
Murderer!
Ethel fled to her room and locked the door, but the word laughed at bolts and bars. It looked from the walls and the pictures and peeped at her from the pages of the book she tried to read. She opened the window and gazed up at the stars, but they, too, knew the hated word and spelled it out in twinkling points of light.
Murderer?