“I am not ill, Mr. Stone, but naturally these dreadful days have upset me, and the horror and suspense are still hanging over me. Can you not bring matters to a crisis? Anything would be better than present conditions!”
“If some member of your family would tell me the truth,” Stone said frankly, “it would help a great deal. You know, Mrs. Wheeler, when three people insist on being regarded as the criminal, it’s difficult to choose among them. Now, won’t you, at least, admit that you didn’t shoot Mr. Appleby?”
“But I did,” and the serene eyes looked at Stone calmly.
“Can you prove it—I mean, to my satisfaction? Tell me this: where did you get a pistol?”
“From the drawer in his desk, where he always keeps it.”
Stone sighed. Of course, both Maida and her mother knew where the revolver was kept, so this was no test of their veracity as to the crime.
Sara Wheeler hesitated for an instant and from that, Stone knew that she had to think before she spoke. Had she been telling the truth, he argued, she would have answered at once.
But immediately she spoke, though with a shade of hesitation.
“I took it earlier in the day—I had it up in my own room.”
“And, when you heard the alarm of fire, you ran downstairs in consequence—but you paused to get the revolver and take it with you!”
This sounded absurd, but Sara Wheeler could see no way out of it, so she assented.
“Feeling sure that you would find your husband and Mr. Appleby in such a desperate quarrel that you would be called upon to shoot?”
“I—I overheard the quarrel from upstairs,” she faltered, her eyes piteous now with a baffled despair.
“Then you went down because of the quarreling voices—not because of the fire-alarm?”
Unable to meet Stone’s inexorable gaze, Mrs. Wheeler’s eyes fell and she nervously responded: “Well, it was both.”
“Now, see here,” Stone said, kindly; “you want to do anything you can, don’t you, to help your husband and daughter?”
“Yes, of course!” and the wide-open eyes now looked at him hopefully.
“Then will you trust me far enough to believe that I think you will best help them by telling the truth?”
“Oh, I can’t!” and with a low moan the distracted woman hid her face in her hands.
“Please do; your attitude proves you are concealing important information. I am more than ever sure you are not the guilty one—and I am not at all sure that it was either of the other two.”