"My duty," said the little man swelling a little.
"Inform? What a word to use!" said Pendleton with asperity. "I mean to give him up to justice as he richly deserves."
"But he didn't do it," said Pen with an odd, detached air. The words came out of her involuntarily.
"Fiddlesticks!" said Pendleton. "You read the paper, didn't you?"
Pen merely smiled the smile that women use when they decline to argue with a man. It is very exasperating to a man.
"You have seen the man once and exchanged a few pleasantries with him!" he cried. "Do you presume to decide from that whether or not he is capable of murder?"
"I suppose he could shoot a man--with sufficient provocation," she said coolly. "Any man could I suppose ... But not like that. Not in the back!"
Pendleton flung up his hands. "Isn't that like a woman! Just because he has fine eyes I suppose, and a taking smile!"
It never reached Pen who was busy with her own thoughts. She knew in her heart without reason, without arguments that the charge was false, but she was searching for reasons that would convince a man. Her instinct led her unerringly to the weak spots of the case against Counsell.
"Why should he leave his pistol behind to convict him?" she asked. "Why should he introduce himself to us under his right name?"
Pendleton waved this impatiently aside. "Oh, they always make some slips. That's how they're caught. From the first I felt there was something funny about him."
"It was you who first asked him to stay," said Pen indignantly.
"Yes. But I didn't expect the house to be turned upside down to entertain him," he retorted. "Something funny about him, skulking down the Bay like that. You remember how he said he preferred to be alone."
"I don't know. Very strange he should slink out of the house without saying good-night to me. Perhaps he saw me reading the paper."
Pen all but wrung her hands. This was men's boasted logic. How could an intelligent person cope with it?
The little man got up with an important air.
"Don't act in haste, Dad," Pen pleaded earnestly. "Something tells me you will regret it. At least sleep on it!"
"He will be gone in the morning," Pendleton said. A look of dismay appeared in his face. "Good Heavens! If he suspects anything he will push off at once!"