Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/128

106 I fancy. But first I want you to tell me the story of the crime, just as it occurred. I suspect there were some details that didn’t get into the Record. Start a cigar first.”

He took a cigar and struck a match.

“There were,” he assented with a smile, “a number of details that didn’t get before the public. Most of them have an unfortunate tendency to implicate Miss Croydon.”

“Miss Croydon?”

“Yes; I don’t mean implicate her in the actual crime—I don’t for an instant believe she had any hand in that; but they seem to indicate that she wasn’t frank with us—that she’s concealing something—protecting somebody. Now there wasn’t any use in telling the fool public that; they’d jump at once to the conclusion—why,” he broke off, abruptly, with some heat, “even as it was”

“Yes,” I said, somewhat surprised at his irritation, “I noticed the shots at her.”

“Some of them were outrageous! It’s a shame that such a woman as that—but you shall judge,” and he told me the story substantially as I have set it down in the first chapters of this history. “There isn’t the least doubt,” he added, “that she took the clippings from Thompson’s pocket-book, and I think it very improbable that she has told us the whole truth concerning the minor details of the crime, but nevertheless she’s innocent.”

He got up and walked across the room and placed his finger over a little hole in the woodwork of the bedroom door.