Shirley Bloodgood had been hanging on his words. She drew a long breath and echoed excitedly: "Circumstantial--" There was a flicker of a smile on her face as she added:--
"Then the newspapers were wrong when they said it was a certainty!..."
Murgatroyd held up his hand and went on to explain:--
"What I tell you is confidential--you understand?"
"Yes, yes," she said impatiently; "but tell me about it--the real facts--that is, if you can."
"There's no reason why I shouldn't, I suppose," said the prosecutor of the pleas. "The real facts as we have them ... as we have them, mind, are simple. Challoner quarrelled with Colonel Hargraves----"
"That makes no difference," he answered with some confusion; "the point is that they were enemies. It was a quarrel in which the passions of each were roused to the utmost. To make a long story short, Colonel Hargraves won ten thousand dollars at Gravesend--the men met in Cradlebaugh's--another quarrel followed----"
"Then," went on the prosecutor, "they parted. That was all--save at two o'clock next morning Hargraves was found in the street back of Cradlebaugh's with a bullet through his heart."
Shirley was quivering with suppressed excitement; nevertheless, she managed to ask:--
"Nothing--only a man named Pemmican of Cradlebaugh's witnessed both quarrels--and Challoner has run away. Looks bad for Challoner, I should say."
"But," persisted Shirley, "surely that evidence is not conclusive...."
"One moment, please," went on the prosecutor calmly; "Hargraves had the ten thousand dollars in cash with him, and----"
"That is conclusive," she commented. "Surely you don't think Lawrence would steal?"
Prosecutor Murgatroyd paused for an instant and placed finger-tip against finger-tip, then he answered slowly:--
"Frankly speaking, I do. I believe," he went on, speaking as though with conviction, "that Challoner would do anything."
"It's impossible! Why, the Challoners have any amount of money!"
"It's the same thing," Shirley protested; "and she just adores him--you do not know how much she adores him, Billy!"
The girl shook her head and answered somewhat sadly:--
"I know, I know, she's blind to everything, Miriam is ..."
Once more she placed her hand on Murgatroyd's arm, unconsciously, impersonally but impulsively.