Later, even though you could not lay your own
hands upon the paper, things began to happen. Knowing what I did, I
had lived too long as it was."
"Yes."
"Suppose you begin at the beginning--and tell me just what you know."
It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told. Carl, with his fastidious
respect for a careful array of facts, found it trying. By a word here
or a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information into
conformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own.
"So," said he coldly, "you thought to stab me the night of the storm
and stabbed Poynter. Fool! Why," he added curtly, "did you later spy
upon my cousin's camp when Tregar had expressly forbidden it?"
It was an unexpected question. Themar flushed uncomfortably. Carl had
a way of reading between the lines that was exceedingly disconcerting.
His information, he said at length after an interval of marked
hesitancy, had been too meager. He had listened at the door once when
the Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary. A housemaid
had frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs--to attend to
something else while they were both safely occupied. Rather than work
blindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add to
his information by spying on her camp.
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