“Does that prove that I am untruthful?” she inquired, raising her eyebrows quickly.
I recollected the glove-button. But the gloves she wore were new ones, and all the buttons were intact.
There was a ring of truth in her denials, yet I was unconvinced. I saw in her answers careful evasion of my questions. First, I myself had found poor Roddy dead, and that he had committed suicide six months before seemed to me but a silly tale. Secondly, her strange actions were suspicious. Thirdly, her curious association with Muriel seemed coupled with the latter’s disappearance, and her clandestine visit to Jack Yelverton intensified the mystery in its every detail.
“Of course, the mere finding of a photograph is no proof that you had met Roddy for six months,” I admitted, recollecting Ash’s statement that he had never seen her visit his master.
“Then why suspect me?” she asked, in a tone of reproach.
“I have expressed no suspicion,” I said, as calmly as I could. “My surprise and doubt are surely pardonable under these curious circumstances—are they not?”
“Certainly!” she responded. “Nevertheless during our acquaintance I have, you must admit, been as open with you as I have dared. You professed your love for me,” she went on ruthlessly, “but I urged you to hesitate. Was I not frank with you when I told you plainly that we could never be lovers?”
I nodded in the affirmative, and sighed when I recollected my lost Muriel.
“Then why do you charge me with deception?” she asked, stretching out her tiny foot neat in its suède shoe, and contemplating it. She seemed nervous and hasty, yet determined to get to the bottom of my suspicions and so ascertain the depth of my knowledge of the truth.
Detecting this, I resolved to act with discretion and diplomacy. Only by the exercise of consummate tact could I solve this enigma.