"Yes, Miss Barlow, I have a theory," resumed Shagarach, turning to Emily again. He folded his arms and looked at her steadfastly, yet as though his gaze were fixed on something beyond.
"I see your lover's photograph in your eyes—mild blue eyes, but touchstones of integrity, hard to deceive. He impresses me well. His story, moreover, bears a somewhat uncommon voucher. It is true because of its improbability. How improbable that any man would refuse a gift of $10,000,000! How improbable that any man, not a sleep-walker, would wander through the streets of a city without any record of his sensuous impressions!"
"But——"
"The improbability of the story demonstrates its truth. Men lie, women lie, children lie. Have you watched a band of girls playing at the imitation of school? How cunningly the teacher feigns anger, the pupils naughtiness and sad repentance. Have you observed the plausibility in the inventions of toddling babes to escape imminent chastisement? Falsehood is a normal faculty and equipped with its protective armor, plausibility. Your friend's story is too preposterous to be untrue."
Emily was bewildered by these rapid paradoxes.
"I congratulate you upon your friendship with so unusual a specimen of our kind, the man who cannot or will not lie. But I should not like to present his defense on such grounds to twelve of his fellow-creatures, normal in that respect. Fortunately we are not driven to that extreme refuge.
"The material for a theory is meager; the chain shows many gaps. But I find no evidence that Floyd attempted to get rid of the servant, Bertha. A child, meditating this crime, would not have neglected so obvious a precaution. Her continued absence was only an opportune accident. Her re-entrance would have resulted in his discovery. The point is pivotal.
"I find that a favorite house dog was left in the room to be sacrificed—a needless cruelty if the incendiary were his master, a necessary precaution if he were a stranger whose actions the animal would have understood and whom he would have followed to the street."
"But would Sire have allowed a stranger even to enter the study?"
"True; but between strangers and friends there is a middle category consisting of persons whom we may call acquaintances. Into these three degrees we are divided by dogkind. It was not a stranger or he would have been attacked. He had no friends left but Bertha, Ellen and Floyd. The dog was drowsing on the mat. The man who entered was an acquaintance.