The Red Mouse Part 17

Shirley seconded her warning, saying quickly:--

"Don't say a word to Mr. Murgatroyd until you have seen a lawyer."

Challoner, still sullen, looked over his shoulder at his wife.

"Who's saying all this? Only a lot of women--what do they know?" And turning back to Murgatroyd: "See here, Murgatroyd, let's get this straight, shall we?" And he looked him full in the eye. "You're the prosecutor--and anything I say will be used against me. Is that right?

Well, this little matter is just as simple as A, B, C." And suddenly drawing himself up to his full height, he went on in a loud, clear voice:--

"I waited for Richard Hargraves with----"

"I warned you," cried Murgatroyd, stretching forth a hand.

Challoner scornfully refused to listen.

"... and when I found him--" he glanced about him defiantly and gave an imitation of a man taking aim and shooting. "There, now, you know the facts."

Murgatroyd turned to his two men.

"It's a case of wilful, deliberate, premeditated murder--murder in the first degree. Take him away!"

Shirley was on her feet in an instant.

"Oh, Mr. Challoner," she cried, springing forward, "why did you tell him?"

"Come on!" Challoner called out gruffly to the men. "Take me away!" He did not even glance at his wife, who clung to the girl, and sobbed on her breast.

The prosecutor nodded to his subordinates, and immediately they seized Challoner by the arm and started toward the door.

"No, no," cried Miriam, tearing herself from Shirley's hold, "don't take him away!" And again and again with all the force left in her: "No! No!

No!--Oh, Laurie!----"

The doors closed behind the men. Then Miriam sank down upon the soiled sofa where he had lain, and sobbed as though her heart would break.

VII

On the morning after Challoner's arrest the prosecutor of the pleas was sitting at his desk in his private office in the court-house when Mixley and McGrath entered.

"You've done as I instructed? You've got Challoner outside?" the prosecutor asked.

The men replied in the affirmative.

"Bring him in," commanded Murgatroyd.

In a few minutes they returned with the prisoner. Challoner looked better than he had the night before. In a thoroughly impersonal way, curtly but not unpleasantly, Murgatroyd addressed him.

"Good-morning! How do you feel?"

The prisoner, still half man, growled:--

"Better. I got some sleep, but I'm still tired as thunder."

"I sent for you this morning," went on the prosecutor, "because of what you said last night. I am not sure that you meant all you said--indeed whether you remember it?"

This interrogation evidently struck Challoner as amusingly superfluous, for he laughed aloud; but the laughter had a note of aching bravado.

"Of course, I remember it," he said presently, and pointing with a steady forefinger to a weapon on the prosecutor's desk, "I shot him with that gun there."

Murgatroyd could not restrain a movement of surprise at Challoner's _Sang Froid_; neither could those trained witnesses, Mixley and McGrath, leaning well forward lest they should miss a word.

"Most decidedly, then," continued the prosecutor, "you do not recall that I told you that anything you might say would----"

"I heard all you said," the prisoner broke in, shrugging his shoulders, "but what's the use--it had to come--I knew it. I was getting tired of hiding in out-of-the-way places, and never having a wink of sleep.

Besides, I knew that Pemmican--Cradlebaugh's man--saw the whole affair.

There was no sense in trying to escape."

Murgatroyd's face adequately expressed his approval of the prisoner's point of view. His voice, however, was distinctly non-committal in tone when he observed easily:--

"Pemmican saw it all, then?"

"Certainly he did," Challoner volunteered.

There was a short pause, in which the prosecutor turned over some papers lying on his desk; when he spoke again he did so without looking up from the doc.u.ments he was scanning.

"I haven't examined Pemmican--my men have, though," he said. "I've got him under lock and key; he's in the house of detention; and he'll have to stay there until----"

Challoner moistened his lips.

"Until my trial, I suppose," he interposed. "Poor devil! That's hard lines!"

The prosecutor ignored the comment, but he reminded the prisoner again that he must be careful not to say anything that could be used against him, concluding with:--

"You came here from the jail quite willingly this morning?"

"Don't you think we can cut all that sort of thing out, Mr. Prosecutor?"

a little scornfully.

Before answering, Murgatroyd shot a glance at his men as if to sharpen their attention.

"Very well, then," he said finally, "if you're quite willing I should like to know the exact details. As I understand it, both Hargraves and you were fatally infatuated with an actress at the Frivolity--quarrelled over her--is that right?"

Challoner reddened. For an instant a wild look came into his eyes.

"Surely there is no necessity of bringing any other names into this," he answered hotly; and then little by little calming down he recounted graphically all the incidents leading to and of that memorable night, saying in conclusion:--

"... And then Room A at Cradlebaugh's and----"