“And you remained downstairs for a time with Mr. Carleton?”
“Yes.” The answer, merely a whisper, seemed forced upon her lips.
“Where were you?”
Again the hesitation. Again the swift glances at Carleton and Rob, and then the low answer:
“In the rose-garden.”
Fessenden understood. The girl had no desire to tell these things, but she knew that he knew the truth, and so she was too clever to lie uselessly.
“How long were you two in the rose-garden, Miss Burt?”
Another pause. Somehow, Fessenden seemed to see the workings of the girl’s mind. If she designated a long time it would seem important. If too short a time, Rob would know of her inaccuracy. And if she said she didn’t know, it would lend a meaning to the rose-garden interview which it were better to avoid.
“Perhaps a half-hour,” she said, at last, and, though outwardly calm, her quickly-drawn breath and shining eyes betokened a suppressed excitement of some sort.
“And you left Mr. Carleton at ten o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what he did after that?”
“I do not!” the answer rang out clearly, as if Miss Burt were glad to be well past the danger point of the dialogue. But it came back at her with the next question.
“What was the tenor of your conversation with Mr. Carleton in the rose garden?”
At this Dorothy Burt’s calm gave way. She trembled, her red lower lip quivered, and her eyelids fluttered, almost as if she were about to faint.
But, by a quick gesture, she straightened herself up, and, looking her interlocutor in the eyes said:
“I trust I am not obliged to answer that very personal question.”
Like a flash it came to Fessenden that her perturbation had been merely a clever piece of acting. She had trembled and seemed greatly distressed in order that Mr. Benson’s sympathy might be so aroused that he would not press the question.
And indeed it required a hardened heart to insist on an answer from the lovely, agitated girl.
But Mr. Benson was not so susceptible as some younger men, and, moreover, he was experienced in the ways of witnesses.
“I am sorry to be so personal, Miss Burt,” he said firmly; “but I fear it is necessary for us to learn the purport of your talk with Mr. Carleton at that time.”
Dorothy Burt looked straight at Schuyler Carleton.
Neither gave what might be called a gesture, and yet a message and a response flashed between the two.
Rob Fessenden, watching intently, translated it to mean a simple negative on Schuyler’s part, but the question in the girl’s eyes he could not read.
Carleton’s “No,” however, was as plain as if spoken, and, apparently comprehending, Miss Burt went evenly on.
“We talked,” she said, “on such subjects as might be expected on the eve of a man’s wedding-day. We discussed the probability of pleasant weather, mention was made of Miss Van Norman and her magnificent personality. The loneliness of Mrs. Carleton after her son’s departure was touched upon, and, while I cannot remember definitely, I think our whole talk was on those or kindred topics.”
“Why did you so hesitate a moment ago, when I asked you to tell this?”
Dorothy opened her lovely eyes in surprise.
“Hesitate! Why, I didn’t. Why should I?”
Mr. Benson was at last put to rout. She had hesitated—more than hesitated; she had been distinctly averse to relating what she now detailed as a most indifferent conversation, but, in the face of that expression of injured innocence, Mr. Benson could say no more on that subject.
“When you left Mr. Carleton,” he went on, “did you know he was about to come over here to Miss Van Norman’s?”
Again the telegraphic signals between Miss Burt and Carleton.
Quick as a flash—invisible to most of the onlookers, but distinctly seen by Fessenden—a question was asked and answered.
“No,” she said quickly; “I did not.”
“You left him at ten o’clock, then, and did not see him again that night?”
“That is correct.”
“And you have no idea how he was occupied from ten o’clock, on?”
“I have not.”
“That’s all at present, Miss Burt.”
The girl left the witness-stand looking greatly troubled.
But the suspicious Mr. Fessenden firmly believed she looked troubled because it made her more prettily pathetic.
He wasn’t entirely right in this, but neither was Dorothy Burt quite as ingenuous as she appeared.
XVIII
Carleton Is Frank
Nearly a week had passed.
The funeral of Madeleine Van Norman had been such as befitted the last of the name, and she had been reverently laid away to rest in the old family vault.
But the mystery of her death was not yet cleared up. The coroner’s inquest had been finished, but most of the evidence, though vaguely indicative, had been far from conclusive.
No further witnesses had been found, and no further important fact had been discovered.
Schuyler Carleton maintained the same inscrutable air, and, though often nervous to the verge of collapse, had reiterated his original story over and over again without deviation. He still refused to state his errand to the Van Norman house on the night of Madeleine’s death. He still declined to say what he was doing between the time he entered the house and the time when he cried out for help. He himself asserted there was little, if any, time therein unaccounted for.
Tom Willard, of course, repeated his story, and it was publicly corroborated by witnesses from the hotel. Tom had changed some during these few days. The sudden accession of a large fortune seemed to burden him rather than to bring him joy. But no one wondered at this when they remembered the sad circumstances which gave him his wealth, and remembered, too, what was no secret to anybody, that he had deeply loved his cousin Madeleine. Of the other witnesses, Cicely Dupuy was the only one whose later evidence was not entirely in accordance with her earlier statements. She often contradicted herself, and when in the witness chair was subject to sudden
