gave a little shiver and seemed instinctively to draw slightly away from Janet.
"I mean," Miss Pembroke went on hastily, "that I have nothing to tell you other than I have already told. I did put the chain on and put out the lights last night at eleven o'clock. I did fasten all of the windows—all of them. Charlotte did unfasten some of the windows between seven and eight this morning; she did unchain and open the door at about eight o'clock. Those are all the facts I know of. I did not kill Uncle Robert, and, of course, Charlotte did not."
"How do you know Charlotte did not?" I asked.
"Only because the idea is absurd. Charlotte has been with us but a short time, and expected to leave soon, any way. My uncle had been cross to her, but not sufficiently so to make her desire to kill him. He never treated her like he treated me!"
The tone, even more than the words, betrayed a deep resentment of her uncle's treatment of her, and as I found I must put my questions very definitely to get any information whatever, I made myself say: "Did you, then, ever desire to kill him?"
Janet Pembroke looked straight at me, and as she spoke a growing look of horror came into her eyes.
"I have promised to be truthful," she said, "so I must tell you that there have been moments when I have felt the impulse to kill Uncle Robert; but it was merely a passing impulse, the result of my own almost uncontrollable temper. The thought always passed as quickly as it came, but since you ask, I must admit that several times it did come."
Laura threw her arms around Janet with a hearty caress, which I knew was meant as an atonement for the shadow of doubt she had recently felt.
"I knew it!" she exclaimed. "And it is your supersensitive honesty that makes you confess to that momentary impulse! Any one so instinctively truthful is incapable of more than a fleeting thought of such a wrong."
I think that at that moment I would have given half my fortune to feel as Laura did; but what Janet had said did not seem to me so utterly conclusive of her innocence. Indeed, I could not evade an impression that sudden and violent anger was often responsible for crime, and in case of a fit of anger intense enough to amount practically to insanity, might it not mean the involuntary and perhaps unremembered commission of a fatal deed? This, however, I immediately felt to be absurd. For, though a crime might be committed on the impulse of a sudden insanity of anger, it could not be done unconsciously. Therefore, if Janet Pembroke was guilty of her uncle's death, directly or indirectly, she was telling a deliberate falsehood; and if she was not guilty, then the case was a mystery that seemed insoluble. But insoluble it should not remain. I was determined to pluck the heart out of this mystery if it were in power of mortal man to do so. I would spare no effort, no trouble, no expense. And yet, like a flash, I foresaw that one of two things must inevitably happen: should I be able to prove Janet innocent, she should be triumphantly acquitted before the world; but if, on the contrary, there was proof to convince even me of her guilt, she must still be acquitted before the world! I was not so inexperienced in my profession as not to know just what this meant to myself and to my career, but I accepted the situation, and was willing, if need be, to take the consequences.
These thoughts had crowded upon me so thick and fast that I was unconscious of the long pause in the conversation, until I was recalled to myself by an instinctive knowledge that Janet was gazing at me. Meeting her eyes suddenly, I encountered a look that seemed to imply the very depths of sorrow, despair, and remorse.
"You don't believe in me," she said, "and your sister does. Why do you doubt my word?"
I had rapidly come to the conclusion that the only possible attitude to adopt toward the strange nature with which I had to deal was that of direct plainness.
"My sister, being a woman, is naturally guided and influenced by her intuitions," I said; "I, not only as a man but as a lawyer, undertaking a serious case, am obliged to depend upon the facts which I observe for myself, and the facts which I gather from the statements of my client."
"But you don't believe the facts I state," said Janet and now her tone acquired a petulance, as of a pouting child.
I was annoyed at this, and began to think that I had to deal with a dozen different natures in one, and could never know which would appear uppermost. I returned to my inquisition.
"Why do you think Charlotte could not have done this thing?" I asked, although I had asked this before.
"Because she had no motive," said Janet briefly.
This was surprising in its implication, but I went doggedly on:
"Who, then, had a motive?"
"I can think of no one except George Lawrence and myself." The troubled air with which Janet said this seemed in no way to implicate either her cousin or herself, but rather suggested to me that she had been pondering the subject, and striving to think of some one else who might have had a motive.
"And you didn't do it," I said, partly by way of amends for my own doubtful attitude, "and George Lawrence couldn't get in the apartment, unless——"
"Unless what?" asked Janet, looking steadily at me.
"Unless you or Charlotte let him in."
I was uncertain how Janet would take this speech. I even feared she might fly into a rage at my suggestion, but, to my surprise, she answered me very quietly, and with a look of perplexity: "No, I didn't do that, and I'm sure Charlotte didn't either. She had no motive."
Again that insistence on motive.
"Then the facts," I said bluntly, "narrow themselves down to these. You say that you know of only yourself and Mr. Lawrence to whom motive might be attributed. Evidence shows only yourself and Charlotte to have had opportunity. Believing, as I thoroughly do, that no one of the three committed the murder, it shall be my task to discover some other individual to whom a motive can be ascribed, and who can be proved to have had opportunity."
At this speech Janet's face lighted up with a brightness that was like a glory. A look of relief, hope, and gladness came into her eyes, and so beautiful did she appear that again I said to myself that this was indeed her real nature; that she had been nearly tortured to death by her dreadful uncle, and that when the mystery was solved and the dreadful tragedy a thing of the past this was the way she would appear always. More than ever I determined to find out the truth, and bring to justice the evil-doer. Alas! how little I thought what would be the sad result of my search for truth!
Chapter XIII.
Janet Is Mysterious
"How clearly you put it!" exclaimed Janet in response to my last statement. "That is exactly what we have to do. Find some other person who had a motive, and who must have found an opportunity."
"I will," I vowed, earnestly, "but it will help me so much if you can only bring yourself to trust me more fully. You know, you must know, that I have only your good at heart."
I should have stopped right here, but it chanced that just at that moment Laura was called away on some household affair and left me alone with Janet. So, acting on an uncontrollable impulse, I said further: "I think if you knew how fervently I desire to do all I can for you, you would look upon me more in the light of a friend."
"Are you my friend?" and Janet Pembroke's dark eyes looked into mine with a wistful gaze and an expression of more gentleness than I had thought the girl capable of. And yet I felt an intuitive certainty that if I met that expression with a similar one, she would at once flash back to her haughty demeanor and inscrutable air.
"I am your friend," I said, but said it with a frank straightforwardness, which I hoped would appeal to her.
But, alas, I had chosen the wrong manner; or I had made a mistake somewhere, for the wistfulness died out of her eyes and her lip curled disdainfully.