Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/376

344 the grating and went out the window. We have seen her marks. And you were that woman, Mrs. Newberry!"

The girl gasped and her eyes wavered to Trant; but seeing no help there now, she recovered herself quickly.

"Of course! Why, of course!" she cried. "The last time I went out, I did go out the window! It was to get the neighbors—didn't I tell you? So I went out the window!"

"Yes; we know you went out the window, Mrs. Newberry," Siler responded mercilessly. "But we know, too, you did not even start for the neighbors. We have traced your tracks on the ice straight to the side door and into the house! Now, Mrs. Newberry, you've tried to make us believe that your husband killed himself. But that won't do! Isn't it a little too strange, if you left by the window while your husband was still alive, that he let the window stay open and the grating unlocked? Yes; it's altogether too strange. You left him dead; and what we want to know—and I'm asking you straight out—is how you did it?"

"How I did it?" the girl repeated mechanically; then with sharp agony and starting eyes: "How I did it! Oh, no, no, I did not do it! I was there—I have not told all the truth! But when I saw you," her horrified gaze resting on Siler, "and remembered you had been here before when he—he threatened me, my only thought was to hide for his sake and for theirs," she indicated the room above, where she had taken her husband's parents, "that he had tried to