“Answer me,” Cray demanded. “Answer this direct question directly. Did you love Doctor Waring?”
Almost like one hypnotized, Miss Mystery gave a helpless glance at her inquisitor and murmured a low, almost inaudible “yes.”
“Then why did you kill him?” Cray stormed at her.
“You were there, in his study the night he—he died.”
“You were! It’s been proved. You went over from this house, across the snow field, and you went in the study and you sat on the plush chair, near the desk. Didn’t you?”
The great dark eyes seemed unable to tear themselves from Cray’s face, and again the half-breathed whisper was, “yes.”
“I protest!” said Trask. “That girl shall not be tortured. Whether she’s guilty or not, she’s entitled to fairer treatment. You can’t make her say those things that may be used against her! Quit it, Cray. I forbid it.”
“That’s right, Cray,” Lockwood said, quietly. “You’ve no right to bait Miss Austin—you make her admit things through sheer fright.”
And it was true. Miss Mystery was trembling, and her face was white, save for the delicate flush on her cheeks and lips that she had placed there herself.
Her great eyes, beneath their heavy dark brows flew from one face to another, and she did not fail to notice the fact that every man in the room, Cray perhaps excepted, was in sympathy with her, while every woman was against her.
This must have comforted her, for she looked about, a faint smile dawning in her eyes.
“Is that true?” she said, “may I be excused from this questioning until I can get counsel? I don’t know what to say—myself—”
Her pretty distress and helplessness again appealed to the masculine sympathy, and, realizing this, she ignored the other sex.
A puzzled expression crossed the face of Maurice Trask.
“Who in the world can she be?” he thought. “That last flash of those eyes, as she drew her heavy eyebrows into a straight line surely reminded me of somebody. By heavens! the Truesdell brows!”
Again he scanned the oval little face. He shook his head in uncertainty, but again declared to himself, “The Truesdell eyebrows!”
“Now look here, all of you,” Old Saltonstall Adams said, “I don’t believe this child is guilty of anything really wrong. If she caught the fancy of Doctor Waring, it may seem pretty awful to us old fogies, but a pretty girl like Miss Austin can’t help charming the menfolks. I don’t want to discuss that, but I do say that it’s no crime to go to see a man in the evening, and too, she may have had some errand we know nothing about. Did Doctor Waring give you that money of his own free will, Miss Austin?”