“Then, Miss Prall,” Gibbs looked straight at her, “here’s the situation. Both you and Mrs Everett expressed a willingness to kill Sir Herbert Binney,—no matter if it was not meant. Both of you may be said to have had a motive; both of you could have found opportunity. And, finally, each of you claims to suspect the other. Now, granting for argument’s sake that one of you is guilty, would not the plausible procedure be to pretend to suspect the other?” “Of course it would,” Eliza Gurney declared. “And since Mrs Everett is the guilty party,—I see it all now! She casts suspicion toward Miss Prall! Of course, Mrs Everett didn’t do it herself, but that Kate Holland did! She is a fiend incarnate, without heart or soul! She is——” “There, there, Eliza, you’d better be still,” Miss Prall warned her. “If you go on like that, Mr Gibbs will think you’re protesting too much!” As a matter of fact, that’s just what Gibbs was thinking, and he looked sharply at Letitia, marveling at her cleverness. If she had been instrumental in the death of Sir Herbert, surely this was just the way she would conduct herself. She was deep as well as clever, and Gibbs began to see light. He was convinced now that the criminals were of a more subtle type than young girls in their teens could possibly be, and the affair, to his thinking, was narrowed down to the households of these two women who were each other’s enemies. He reasoned that the only way to learn anything from such dissemblers as they all were, was to catch them off their guard, and he greatly desired to get the rival factions together, in order that anger or spite might cause one or other to disclose her secret. “Perhaps,” Gibbs said, “it might be well for us to go to Mrs Everett, or send for her to come here, and so get the testified statement as to these assertions of willingness to kill. I don’t think they’re customary among the women of your class.” “You doubt my word!” flared up Letitia Prall. “Let me tell you, Mr Gibbs, that I refuse to have it corroborated by that woman! I tell you the truth,—she is incapable of that!” “That’s why I want to give you a chance to refute her, to deny her to her face——” “Never! I don’t want to see her! She shall not enter my door! Her very presence is contaminating! Adeline Everett! She is a slanderer——” “Wait a moment, Miss Prall. What she has said of you, you have also said of her!” “But I speak truth; she tells falsehoods. Nobody ever believes a word she says!” “Of course not!” chimed in Eliza. “Adeline Everett is a whited sepulcher,—a living lie!” Even more belligerent than the words was the tone and the facial expression of the speaker. Miss Gurney was not a beautiful woman at best, and her rage transformed her into a veritable termagant. Her sparse gray hair fell in wisps about her ears and her head shook in emphasis of her objurgations, while her pale blue eyes blinked with fury as she strove to find words harsh enough.