Miss Pembroke, to be unpleasantly inquisitive, but it is imperative that I should know the facts of the case. What was the reason of your uncle's anger, aside from the question of your household bills?"
"He was angry with me because I refused to become engaged to Mr. Leroy."
"Mr. Graham Leroy, your uncle's lawyer?"
"Yes, that is the man."
"Your uncle wished you to marry him?"
"He did."
"Mr. Leroy has asked you to become his wife?"
"He has."
The cold, even tones of the two speakers, and the quiet expressionless faces seemed to rob this strange conversation of all hint of personality. For myself, I felt a glad thrill that Janet Pembroke could speak thus dispassionately of the man with whom I had feared she was in love. And, yet, in love with him she might be, for as a lawyer, I knew much of the vagaries and contradictions of woman's perversity; and I realized that the mere fact of Miss Pembroke's excessive calm might mean only a hiding of excessive emotion.
Inexorably the Coroner went on.
"Did your uncle promise you a large sum of money if you would marry Mr. Leroy?"
Miss Pembroke flashed a reproachful glance at Charlotte, who had of course brought about this question, but she answered, in a steady voice: "It was not of the nature of a bargain, as your words seem to imply."
"But you had asked him for a large sum of money?"
"I had done so."
"You asked him last evening?"
"Yes."
"Knowing that he had a large sum of money in the house?"
"I——I was not sure that he had." It was the first time that the girl had stammered or hesitated in her speech, and though it told against her in the minds of the jurors, yet to me it only showed a giving way of her enforced calm.
"What did you want the money for?" said the Coroner, suddenly.
Miss Pembroke looked at him, and now, her eyes flashed like those of an accusing goddess. "You have no right to ask that!" she exclaimed, "and I refuse to tell."
"It certainly has no bearing on the case," said George Lawrence, and his haughty, disdainful tones seemed like a sneer at the way the Coroner was conducting matters.
Mr. Ross turned red, but he did not repeat his question. Instead, he took up a new line of query.
"Had your Uncle any enemies that you know of?"
"I do not know exactly what you mean by enemies," replied Miss Pembroke; "owing to his unfortunate disposition, my uncle had no friends, but I do not know of anyone whom I would consider an aggressive enemy.
"Your uncle went to his room, you say, at about ten o'clock?"
"Yes, that was his usual hour for retiring."
"And after you yourself retired, did you hear anything in the night—any noise, that might have seemed unusual?"
"N—n—no," came a hesitating answer, after a considerable pause. Surely, no one could doubt that this girl was not telling all she knew! The evidence that she gave was fairly forced from her; it came hesitatingly, and her statements were unconvincing. She needed help, she needed counsel; she was too young and inexperienced to cope with the situation in which she found herself. But though I judged her thus leniently, the Coroner did not, and speaking almost sharply, he said:
"Consider carefully, Miss Pembroke. Are you sure you heard no noise in the night?"
Her calm seemed to have returned. "In an apartment house," she said, "there are always unexplainable noises. It is impossible to tell whether they come from the halls, the other apartments or the elevator. But I heard no noise that I considered suspicious or of evil import. Nothing to indicate what,—what must have taken place." She shuddered and buried her face in her hands as if to shut out an awful, imaginary sight.
"Then when you last saw or heard your uncle he was leaving you in a fit of rage?"
"Yes."
When Janet said this her eyes filled with tears, and I could readily understand how it hurt the tender-hearted young girl to remember that her uncle's last words to her had been uttered in anger. This, however, did not seem to affect the coroner. He went steadily on, with his voice singularly lacking in inflections.
"What did you do after your uncle retired?"
"I sat in the drawing-room and read for an hour or so."
"And then?"
"Then I put out the lights and went to bed."
Janet seemed to think that this ended her examination, and started to return to her seat; but the coroner stopped her.
"Miss Pembroke," he said, "I must ask you a few more questions. Where was your servant?"
"She had gone to bed some time earlier—about nine o'clock, I should say."
"So that after your uncle left you you were alone?"
"Yes."
"And when you went to bed you put out the lights for the night?"
"Yes."
"You——" The coroner hesitated for the fraction of a second, and then cleared his throat and went on: "You put the night-chain on the front door?"
"Yes." Janet spoke as if the matter were of no importance.
"Then—pardon me, Miss Pembroke—but if you put the chain on last night, at eleven, and Charlotte took it off this morning, at eight, how was it possible for a marauder to enter, as the inspector tells me he finds all the windows fastened, except those which Charlotte says she opened herself this morning?"
"I don't know," said Janet, the dazed look returning to her pale face, and then, sinking to the floor, she again swooned away.
Chapter IX.
George Lawrence
The implication was awful, monstrous, and yet—there it was. Since, as Janet said, she put the chain on, and since it had been found still on by Charlotte in the morning, certainly no one could have entered the apartment during the night by that door. And as the apartment was the duplicate of our own, I knew there was no other door. There was no rear entrance, and the dumb-waiter closed with a snap lock on the kitchen side.
The inspector stated that the windows had evidently been securely fastened through the night. Those in the sleeping-rooms, which were partly opened for ventilation, were secured by a burglar-proof device, which fastened them at any desired point, leaving ample room for air, but far too small a space for a human being to pass through. Thus the possibility of an intruder was eliminated, and, granting that, who had killed Mr. Pembroke?
Logically speaking, it must have been some one already in the apartment, and the other occupants numbered but two. It didn't seem that it could have been Charlotte; and my mind refused even a hint of a thought of Janet in that connection; and yet—who?
As I sat stunned, I vaguely saw that some one had raised Miss Pembroke, and that Laura had once more taken her in charge.
I looked at the hard, impassive face of the coroner, and, like a flash, I realized that he believed Janet guilty, and that was why he had questioned her along the line he did.
He meant to prove first motive and then exclusive opportunity! I, as a lawyer, followed the workings of his mind, and understood at last his rigorous catechism of the poor girl.
Janet guilty! Why, it was simply a contradiction of terms. That girl was