"How do you account for his making Orkins a confidant?"
"He was too self-centered, too egotistical, to invite the confidence of brainy people. He seemed to like to impress—startle—inferior minds with his discoveries. Orkins was a highly trained servant, and a general handy man, but he was not intellectual."
"But you could easily have escaped all this bullying and domineering on the part of your husband?"
"I often considered divorce," was the reply, "but a latent sense of duty to my marriage vows prevented me from taking that step."
Here McGinity suddenly switched off that line of inquiry, and turned to another. "Why have you brought us here today?" he asked.
"To disclose certain facts which prove my husband tricked Henry Royce shamelessly in these Martian revelations."
"When did you come into possession of these facts?"
"Less than a month ago. Up to that time I had been as keenly interested in the matter, and as gullible as the rest of you, and the public at large. When Rene found that I had acquired this knowledge, and that, motivated by a deep sense of justice and fair play, I meant to disclose the real meaning of these revelations, he hid my clothes, and locked me up in that attic room, where you found me."
"How did you manage to get downstairs and phone to the Royce house, last evening?"
"Orkins, who served my meals, forgot to lock the door after him. He seemed preoccupied and nervous. It was my first opportunity to seek outside aid since my imprisonment. I stole out quietly, and crept downstairs, to the phone in the library, unaware that my husband was shadowing me."