I was in my study there when
Mullins called me to tell me what he had discovered. It looks as
if there had been a duel. Look at these swords." Then he turned
to his secretary. "I think, Captain Tremayne," he said gravely,
"that you had better report yourself under arrest to your colonel."
Tremayne stiffened suddenly. "Report myself under arrest?" he
cried. "My God, Sir Terence, you don't believe that I - "
Sir Terence interrupted him. The voice in which he spoke was
stern, almost sad; but his eyes gleamed with fiendish mockery the
while. It was Polichinelle that spoke - Polichinelle that mocks
what time he slays. "What were you doing here?" he asked, and it
was like moving the checkmating piece.
Tremayne stood stricken and silent. He cast a desperate upward
glance at the balcony overhead. The answer was so easy, but it
would entail delivering Richard Butler to his death. Colonel Grant,
following his upward glance, beheld Lady O'Moy for the first time.
He bowed, swept off his cocked hat, and "Perhaps her ladyship," he
suggested to Sir Terence, "may have seen something."
"I have already asked her," replied O'Moy.
And then she herself was feverishly assuring Colonel Grant that she
had seen nothing at all, that she had heard a cry and had come
out on to the balcony to see what was happening.
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