She waved him to a chair. He sank into it, draping one long leg over its fellow.
“What do you want of me, Mr. Gethryn?” The voice was lifeless as the woman, and Anthony shivered. The sexless always alarmed him.
“A great deal, Miss Hoode.” In spite of his aversion his tone was blandly courteous.
“I cannot imagine—”
“Please—one moment,” said Anthony. “As you know, I came down here to Marling to find out, if possible, who killed your brother. A⸺”
“That task,” said the woman, “has already been performed.”
“Not quite, I think. In my opinion, young Deacon had no more to do with the murder than I. Each minute I spend in this house increases my certainty. This morning I found something I had been looking for, something that may throw a light where one is badly needed, something which you must tell me about.”
She drew herself yet more upright on her straight-backed chair.
“Mr. Gethryn,” she said, “I like neither your manner nor your manners.”
“Unfortunately,” said Anthony grimly, “neither manner nor manners matter just now. Miss Hoode, I started on this business half out of boredom, half because a friend asked me to; but now—well, I’m going to finish it.”
“But—but I don’t understand at all what you are talking about.” The woman was plainly bewildered, yet there seemed in her tone to be an uneasiness not born of bewilderment alone.
Anthony took from his breast-pocket a thick packet of letters. The paper was a deep mauve, the envelopes covered with heavy, sprawling characters. The bundle was held together by a broad ribbon, this too of deep mauve. He balanced the little bundle in the palm of his hand; then looked up to see white rage on the bony, dull face of the woman. The rage, he thought, was not unmixed with fear; but not the kind of fear he had expected.
“These,” he said, “are what I want you to explain. To explain, that is, who they are from, and why you took them from your brother’s desk and hid them again in your own room.”
She rose to her feet; moved a step forward. “You—you—” she began, and choked on the words.
Anthony stood up. “Oh, I know I’m a filthy spy. Don’t imagine that I think this private inquiry agent game is anything but noisome. It has been nasty, it will be nasty, and it is nasty, in spite of the cachet of Conan Doyle. I know, none better, that to rifle your room while you were at the inquest this morning was a filthy thing to do. I know that browbeating you now is filthier—but I’m going to find out who killed your brother.”
“It was that boy,” said the woman, white-lipped. She had fallen back into her chair.
“It was not that boy. And that’s why I shall go on thinking and spying and crawling and bullying until I find out who it really was. Now, tell me why you stole those letters.” He moved forward and stood looking down at her.
An ugly, dull flush spread over her face. She sat erect. Her colourless eyes flamed.
“You think—you dare to think I killed him?” she cried in a dreadful whisper.
Anthony shook his head. “Not necessarily. I shall know better what I think when you’ve told me what I want to know.”
“But what have those foul scratchings to do with—with John’s death?” She pointed a shaking finger at the little package in his hands.
“Nothing, everything, or just enough,” said Anthony. “You’re asking me the very questions which I want you, indirectly, to answer.”
She said: “I refuse,” and closed tightly the thin-lipped mouth.
“Must I force your hand?” he asked. “Very well. You must tell me what I want to know, because, if you don’t, I shall go to Scotland Yard, where I have some small influence, and lay these letters and the story of how I found them before the authorities. You must tell me because, if you don’t, you will lead me to believe that you do, in fact, know something of how your brother met his death. You must tell me because, if you don’t”—he paused, and looked at her until she felt the gaze of the greenish eyes set in the swarthy face to be unbearable—“because, if you don’t,” he repeated, “the contents of these letters and their implication are bound to become known to others beside you and me. You will tell me because to keep that last from happening you would do anything.”
Even as he finished speaking he knew that last shot had told, fired though it had been in the dark. The woman crumpled. And in her terror Anthony found her more human than before.
“No, no, no!” she whispered. “I’ll tell. I’ll tell.”
Anthony stood, waiting.
“Did you read those—those letters?” The words came tumbling from her lips in almost unseemly haste.
Anthony nodded assent.
“Then you must know that this woman—the Thing that wrote them was John’s—John’s—mistress.”
Again he nodded, watching curiously the emotions that supplanted each other in the nondescript face of his victim. Fear he had seen and anxiety; but now there were both these with horror, indignation, tenderness for the dead, and a fervour of distaste for anything which savoured of “loose living.” He remembered what he had been told of the lady’s rigid dissentingness, and understood.
She went on, more confidently now that she had once brought herself to speak of “unpleasantnesses” to this strange man who watched her with his strange eyes.
“You see,” she said, “nearly a year ago I found out that John was—was associating with this—this woman. I will not tell you how I found out—it is too long a story—but my discovery was accidental. I taxed my brother with his wickedness; but he was so—strange and abrupt—his manner was violent—that I had to leave him with my protest barely voiced.
“Afterwards I tried again and again to make him see the folly, the
