Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/296

 St. Pierre de Chartreuse. But in the shock of remembering, Nora remembered something else as well—something which she, in common with all the world, had known since the first day of the inquest. No revolver had been found lying beside Lady Hereward's body, by the police. The murderer, who had thrown it down where Liane had seen it, must have returned later, taken the weapon, and hidden it.

There was only one name in her mind which coupled itself with murderer. She pictured Sir Ian going back to the Tower, where his dead wife lay staring into eternity, bending down over her to pick up the revolver—blood-stained, maybe—and hiding it where (Nora had read only yesterday in a French quotation from a London daily) Gaylor the detective had lately discovered it: thrust deep down in a rabbit-hole.

"Perhaps he had just decency enough in him not to want Ian suspected of his crime," she thought, "since it seems it really was Ian's revolver. And yet, if he didn't deliberately throw suspicion upon Ian to spare himself, why choose Ian's revolver?"

Her brain worked quickly, following the line of this question. How came Sir Ian to have the weapon? Had he actually taken it from Ian's house, long ago, meditating the murder, when opportunity should arise? Yet that could hardly be, she thought, remembering words which she had heard, trembling icily in the first-floor room of the Tower, that hot afternoon in June.