The Red Mouse Part 11

"Then he wasn't caught in Chicago!" Shirley exclaimed almost jubilantly; and then touching him on the arm a bit familiarly, she added:--

"Billy, you don't really believe that Laurie murdered Colonel Hargraves?"

Murgatroyd laughed a short laugh.

"If I didn't know you, Shirley, I should imagine you were sparring for time.... If I didn't know you I wouldn't answer your questions. As it is, I must answer them in the same way that I would do anything you asked of me--short of crime."

"If you put it that way," returned Shirley, drawing away from him, her tone growing cold, "you needn't answer me at all."

Murgatroyd did not heed her.

"I don't know," he went on evasively, "whether Challoner murdered Hargraves or not."

"You don't know ..."

"No," returned the prosecutor; "so far the evidence is purely circ.u.mstantial."

Shirley Bloodgood had been hanging on his words. She drew a long breath and echoed excitedly: "Circ.u.mstantial--" There was a flicker of a smile on her face as she added:--

"Then the newspapers were wrong when they said it was a certainty!..."

Murgatroyd held up his hand and went on to explain:--

"What I tell you is confidential--you understand?"

"Yes, yes," she said impatiently; "but tell me about it--the real facts--that is, if you can."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't, I suppose," said the prosecutor of the pleas. "The real facts as we have them ... as we have them, mind, are simple. Challoner quarrelled with Colonel Hargraves----"

"What about?" asked Shirley impulsively.

Murgatroyd flushed.

"That makes no difference," he answered with some confusion; "the point is that they were enemies. It was a quarrel in which the pa.s.sions of each were roused to the utmost. To make a long story short, Colonel Hargraves won ten thousand dollars at Gravesend--the men met in Cradlebaugh's--another quarrel followed----"

"And then?"

"Then," went on the prosecutor, "they parted. That was all--save at two o'clock next morning Hargraves was found in the street back of Cradlebaugh's with a bullet through his heart."

Shirley was quivering with suppressed excitement; nevertheless, she managed to ask:--

"What does that prove?"

"Nothing--only a man named Pemmican of Cradlebaugh's witnessed both quarrels--and Challoner has run away. Looks bad for Challoner, I should say."

"But," persisted Shirley, "surely that evidence is not conclusive...."

"One moment, please," went on the prosecutor calmly; "Hargraves had the ten thousand dollars in cash with him, and----"

"That is conclusive," she commented. "Surely you don't think Lawrence would steal?"

Prosecutor Murgatroyd paused for an instant and placed finger-tip against finger-tip, then he answered slowly:--

"Frankly speaking, I do. I believe," he went on, speaking as though with conviction, "that Challoner would do anything."

Shirley shook her head.

"It's impossible! Why, the Challoners have any amount of money!"

Murgatroyd shrugged his shoulders.

"Challoner's wife has, but----"

"It's the same thing," Shirley protested; "and she just adores him--you do not know how much she adores him, Billy!"

Again Murgatroyd shrugged his shoulders.

"But how about him?"

The girl shook her head and answered somewhat sadly:--

"I know, I know, she's blind to everything, Miriam is ..."

Once more she placed her hand on Murgatroyd's arm, unconsciously, impersonally but impulsively.

"Oh, it's perfectly dreadful, the whole thing!"

Unwittingly, Murgatroyd changed his mood to meet hers.

"Yes," he said, "to have ruined himself like this! It's a tragedy to see a man like Challoner go down hill. In the old days he was such a decent chap."

"You were a friend of his, weren't you?"

"Yes, before he married, when he was poor and decent like the rest of us--yes, I was a friend of his."

Shirley Bloodgood drew her brows together.

"Indeed! You must have been a good friend to let him take his downward course."

For an instant this imputation seemed to rest heavily on Murgatroyd's shoulders; but he cast it from him quickly with a sigh, and answered:--

"A man's best friends are like a man's good wife; they do not desert him, whatever happens; he deserts them. And so it was with Challoner."

"And so at the last he has no friends?"

"Evidently not, save a flock of vampires that feed upon his purse and will continue to feed so long as he has a purse." He pulled out his watch. "But," he protested, "I am wasting time--I--Oh, pardon me," he quickly corrected, flushing with embarra.s.sment, "I did not mean my time, exactly; but frankly, I must see Mrs. Challoner."

Shirley shook her head.