Sylvia interrupted him. “There is worse.”
“How worse? What do you mean?”
“Fanny was going to run off with him.”
“With Loftus?”
Sylvia nodded. Her face, always pale, now was white.
“But,” Orr expostulated, “you don’t fancy that Annandale—?”
“No.” The monosyllable fell longly from the girl. “No,” she repeated. “But others may.”
“I don’t see why. There is nothing to go on. Is there though?”
Sylvia did not directly reply. She looked down at her hands and then at her cousin. “I think,” she presently said, “that he must have learned of it last evening after we went away. At dinner I am sure he had no suspicions.”
“Had you any?”
Sylvia raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know,” she remarked, “whether when you were going from here you noticed him particularly, but in the hall he had told her that he would shoot him.”
Orr sniffed. “That is rather awkward.”
“Then almost at once he went. But where?”
“Have you heard from him since?”
“No, and it is for that reason I sent for you. Won’t you go to him and let me know?”
But Orr did not like the errand. It seemed to him that Annandale might be the man. “That, too, is rather awkward,” he objected.
Against the objection Sylvia pleaded. Manifestly she was nervous. “If you won’t go,” she said at last, “I shall.”
“Oh, well, if you put it in that way,” Orr reluctantly replied, “I suppose I must.”
“And you will come back?”
“As quickly as I can.”
There is a line of Hugo descriptive of the earnestness with which people gape at a wall behind which something has occurred. Orr recalled it when he reached Gramercy Park. At one end of the park was a great crowd staring at the high fence of iron. It was behind the fence that Loftus had been found. The place itself was directly in front of Annandale’s house.
On entering that house Orr was shown into the drawing-room. Shortly, from a room beyond, Annandale appeared.
“You have heard, have you not?” he asked. “But come in here.”
Orr followed him to the other room. In it was a sideboard on which decanters stood.
“Will you have something?”
Orr thanked him. Annandale helped himself to a liquor. As he did so the decanter clicked against the glass and, as he raised the glass, Orr saw that his hand shook.
“It is very strange,” said Annandale, repeating almost the words which Orr had used to Sylvia. “I had no cause to love the man, but—”
“I know,” Orr interrupted. “My cousin told me. But if I were you I would not talk of it. She seemed worried lest you might.”
Annandale put down the glass. He was quite flushed. “But,” he exclaimed, “she does not suspect me!”
“Of course not. On the contrary. But then the fact suggests a motive which, coupled with any threat you may have made, might, in the absence of other clues, made a prima facie case, which to say the least, don’t you see, would be nasty.”
“Damnably so!” Annandale muttered dumbly. Then, raising the glass again, he threw out: “But what nonsense! A little after you had all gone from here I went to your cousin’s—”
“Yes. I know you did. I met you on the stoop.”
“Did you?” said Annandale with marked surprise.
“Why, yes. Don’t you remember?”
Annandale passed a hand across his face and sat down.
“Don’t you remember?” Orr reiterated.
Annandale shook his head.
“But you remember where you went afterward, don’t you? Did you come directly here?”
Annandale made no answer.
“Can’t you tell me?” Orr asked. “Or is it that you don’t wish to?”
On a mantel opposite the sideboard a clock was ticking. For awhile in the room only that ticking could be heard.
“Can’t you?” Orr asked again.
Annandale stood up. It was as though the question had prodded him. He moved to the sideboard. But Orr got in his way.
“Don’t drink any more. Try to think.”
“I can’t,” said Annandale. He moved back and sat down. In his face the flush had deepened. It looked mottled. He himself looked ill.
Orr, a hand extended on the sideboard, beat on it a brief tattoo.
“This is rather tedious,” he said at last. “It is only a little less than a year ago that you had a similar lapse. Oddly enough, it began as this has, at my cousin’s house. But we must try to keep her out of the matter. Were she asked what you said it might be embarrassing, don’t you think?”
“What I said? What did I say?”
Annandale as he spoke looked so abject that Orr feared that he might go to pieces there and then. Humanely he changed the subject. “Of course, whoever did it will be nabbed. Meanwhile, it is only to prevent any stupid suspicions that I venture to advise. By the way, have you any idea who could have done it?”
Annandale again ran his hand across his eyes; then, looking up at Orr, he replied: “Not one—unless he did it himself.”
“H’m. Well, yes. That might be. But what does Mrs. Annandale think?”
“She does not know. Or, at least, she did not at noon. I heard it then from Harris. I told him not to say anything to her. Shortly after, as I understood, she went out, to her mother’s, I believe, though, of course, since then—”
The sentence was not completed. Fanny was entering the room. Orr had always admired her very much, but never so much as then. She was dressed in black, which is becoming to blonds, and richly dressed, he afterward thought, he could not be sure for he lacked the huckster’s eye. But his admiration was not on this occasion induced by her looks, though a woman’s looks, when she has any, are always notable if unnoticed factors. His admiration was caused by the way she took things.
With the air of one inquiring the time of day she glanced at Annandale and asked, almost with a lisp: “Why didn’t you shoot me?”
Orr turned to Annandale. He was rising. From his face the flush had gone. He was lurid. The word lurid is used because it is more
