"Correy is a sport, an incorrigible one; it is his only weakness. He bets like an Englishman--not for the money, for the sums he risks are small, but for the love of it--the fun--the transient excitement It might be"--here Sweetwater's words came slowly and with shamefaced pauses--"that the shooting of that arrow--I believe I said something like this before--was the result of a dare."
A halt took place in the quick tattoo which Mr. Gryce's fingers were drumming out on the table-top. It was infinitesimal in length, but it gave Sweetwater courage to add:
"Then, I hear that he wishes to marry a rich girl and shrinks from proposing to her on account of his small salary."
"Nothing so far as I can see. I am only elaborating the meager report lying there under your hand. But I recognize my folly. You ordered me to dream, and I did so. Cannot we forget my unworthy vaporings and enter upon the consideration of what may prove more profitable?"
Here he glanced down at the slip of paper he himself held--the slip which Mr. Gryce had handed him with a single word written on it, and that word a name.
"In a moment," was Mr. Gryce's answer. "First explain to me how, with the facts all in mind, and your chart before your eyes, you reconciled Correy's position on the side staircase two minutes after the shooting with your theory of a quick escape to the court by means of the door back of the tapestry? Haven't you hurried matters to get him so far in such a short space of time?"
"Mr. Gryce, I have heard you say yourself that this question of time has been, from the first, our greatest difficulty. Even with these three means of escape in our minds, it is difficult to see how it was possible for anyone to get from the gallery to the court in the minute or so elapsing between the cry of the dying girl and the appearance at her side of the man studying coins in the adjoining section."
"You are right. There was a delay somewhere, as we shall find later on. But granting this delay, a man would have to move fast to go the full length of the court from the Curator's room even in the time which this small delay might afford him. But perhaps you cut this inextricable knot by locating Correy somewhere else than where he placed himself at the making of the chart."