“Why?” said Nugent rather softly.
“Because it proved someone shot at him,” she said.
“He says it was accident,” said Nugent, watching her closely. “He ought to know.”
“I wanted him to have that revolver,” she said with a kind of obliquity.
“You’re saying that his accident was actually an attempted murder?” cried Soper.
Again she whirled around to face him, her chin high, her voice steady. “He wouldn’t have shot himself like that! He wouldn’t have been cleaning a gun in the garden at eleven o’clock at night!”
“Did you know that the revolver belonged to Conrad Brent?”
“I wasn’t sure. I knew that he’d had a revolver.”
“Did he admit it belonged to him? When you took it to the library, I mean?”
“Yes. That is, by implication. He recognized it and asked where I’d found it.”
“See here, Miss Cable,” said Soper with a crafty look, “did you accuse him of trying to kill his son?”
“No. Certainly not.”
“Why did you give him the revolver?”
“Because I wanted him to know of it, of course. I wanted him to know that I had found it in the garden, hidden. I wanted him to know.”
“Why?” said Soper again.
“Naturally because something ought to be done about it. It proved that Craig didn’t shoot himself. He wouldn’t have hidden it.”
“Exactly what did he say?”
Drue flushed. “He said I couldn’t have found the revolver just there. He said I was-was trying to make trouble.”
“And you…”
“I saw then that he was ill. I told him he’d better lie down. I started to leave but he-he asked me to stay with him. And then he got worse. All at once. And-and died.”
After a moment Nugent said, “Who do you think shot Craig?”
Again the defiance went out of her. She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know…”
“Don’t know! Of course, you don’t know! It’s an obvious attempt to divert your inquiry, Lieutenant. I’m surprised that you can’t see through this girl’s story.” Soper came close to Drue, his face red and threatening, shaking a pudgy but forceful forefinger under her nose. “Now, you see here, Miss. We want the truth. You did quarrel with Conrad Brent, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t quarrel with him. I asked him to permit me to stay and take care of Craig.”
“You quarreled with him! You were heard yesterday afternoon when he tried to send you away. You blamed him for breaking up your marriage. You came here in the hope of getting young Brent back again. But his father wouldn’t let you, so you killed him.”
Drue’s face wasn’t white any more; two scarlet flames were in her cheeks, her eyes flashed. “I came here to nurse Craig,” she said. “And he was my husband until his father…”
“Drue, Drue!” I cried, my hand on her arm.
And Soper said, “Arrest her, Nugent. I insist upon it. I’ll make you responsible if she gets away. It’s a murder charge, there’s no use in prolonging this thing. Take her away…”
“I don’t think there’s enough evidence-material evidence-to convict,” said Nugent softly but very coolly.
“Enough evidence!” snorted the District Attorney. “What more do you want? There’s the hypodermic…”
“We haven’t made sure that she had one.”
“You will, you will! No use asking her, she’d only lie. Yes, and you”-he pounced on me, his eyes angry, bright slits in his red face-“you are putting her up to it. Well, we’ll take care of you, too. Besides, there’s the witness…”
“Nicky Senour,” said Nugent again softly. “And he says he won’t swear to it. Besides, he didn’t see her kill him. He said only that she was in the library with Brent…”
“He said they were having a row. That kind of thing goes a long way with a jury. Don’t be a fool, Nugent. You’ll get the evidence. But put the girl under arrest; make sure you’ve got her. All the evidence in the world won’t do you any good later if you’ve let the girl who did it get away. Arrest her…”
“I’ll take her into custody,” said the Lieutenant slowly.
“Custody! What do you mean by that?”
“I’ll keep her here, in her room. Under guard,” said Nugent.
And in the end, incredibly, that was exactly what he did. But first they questioned her again, and made me leave before they began. I would have stayed; but when a District Attorney, a Police Lieutenant and two remarkably stalwart and able-bodied troopers are lined up against one, there’s nothing much to do. I retired as ungracefully as it lay in my power to do and sat on the bench in the hall watching the door. Never before in my whole nursing experience have I let anything come between me and my patient but frankly, while I sat there, eyes glued to the door of that room, trying and failing to hear anything but a rapid murmur of voices, I didn’t care whether Craig Brent lived or died, except I hated him so, just then, for being the cause of Drue’s presence in that ill-omened house that I’d a little rather he’d have died, preferably in boiling oil. If I could have made him come alive again. My own impulses to murder, while vehement in their way, are not very lasting.
Once I did go upstairs. The door to Craig’s room was open and I peeked in cautiously. Peter Huber was sitting in a chair beside him, smoking. Anna was standing at the window, her back toward the room and her head bent with a handkerchief to her eyes, and Craig and Peter were talking in low voices. Craig looked all right, certainly the police were not hounding him from trap to trap, from admission to admission, from refuge to refuge. I went quickly back to the bench downstairs and they were still in the little morning room.
I was there when they emerged. Drue was white and drawn-looking; even her lips were chalky. She looked at me with great, haunted, dark eyes and I could read nothing in them, although I thought she was thankful I was there, waiting for her. And they took her straight upstairs, and put her in her room, under guard! I followed. Soper, giving me a suspicious look, had turned into the library.
Well. Nugent, if he had eyes in his head as he certainly did, couldn’t have failed to see that my room connected with Drue’s. But the trooper already on guard didn’t stop me when I entered my own room. And of course I went straight through the bathroom to Drue.
She was standing in the middle of the room, facing the door, head up, hands clenched at her sides as if at bay. When she heard me she whirled and suddenly crumpled down on the bed. “Oh, Sarah, Sarah, what shall I do?”
I sat down on the bed beside her and took her hands. “What have you told them? What did they make you say? Quick, Drue. Tell me.”
In the end it wasn’t too bad; which is to say it could have been worse but not much worse. They had questioned her at length about her interview with Conrad, about her reasons for coming to Balifold, about the hypodermic syringe they had not found among her other nursing tools, about the supply of digitalis they had found. Somehow (as if she saw now, clearly, her own danger) she had evaded them; she had not admitted that she had given Conrad a hypodermic, she had not admitted that he asked her for the medicine and that, when she went to look for it, it was not in the drawer.
She had indeed fought and evaded-especially about the box of medicine-in a way that was not like Drue; she was, as most of us are, naturally and innately truthful. If she had been fighting thus to protect somebody else (somebody she loved) it would have seemed to me more comprehensible and more like Drue. She had that kind of courage; I’ve seen her fight to save a patient with the courage and fury of a tigress. But I didn’t stop then to think of that; I was only thankful that she had kept them from grinding any really convicting admission out of her.
“I kept saying I didn’t know, I didn’t know. I remembered what you said, and told them I wanted a lawyer. Sarah, when they asked me a direct question: did I give him a hypodermic of digitalis? Did he ask me for his medicine?-I-I squirmed and evaded and wriggled out of it.” She pressed her hands over her face. “Funny,” she said unevenly, “how hard it is to tell an outright lie, even when you’ve made up your mind to do it. Instead of lying, you-you evade, you weasel out of making a direct statement, you-oh, it’s fantastic, really. You employ all the spirit of lying and yet you can’t make yourself conquer the fact. Well,” she took her hands from her face and stared at the rug, “they don’t know I gave him the hypodermic-not certainly. But-oh, Sarah, what can I do!”