"No," said she, "I want to think first. Give me time to think. I dare not say a word without thinking."
"Truth needs no consideration. If you wish to denounce this man——"
Her look said she did.
"Then now is the time."
She gave him a sharp glance; the first she had bestowed2 upon him since leaving Miss Althorpe's.
"You are no doctor," she declared. "Are you a police-officer?"
"I am a detective."
"Oh!" and she hesitated for a moment, shrinking from him with very natural distrust and aversion. "I have been in the toils3 then without knowing it; no wonder I am caught. But I am no criminal, sir; and if you are the one most in authority here, I beg the privilege of a few words with you before I am put into confinement4."
"I will take you before the Superintendent5," said Mr. Gryce. "But do you wish to go alone? Shall not Mr. Van Burnam accompany you?"[Pg 346]
"Mr. Van Burnam?"
"Is it not he you wish to denounce?"
"I do not wish to denounce any one to-day."
"What do you wish?" asked Mr. Gryce.
"Let me see the man who has power to hold me here or let me go, and I will tell him."
"Very well," said Mr. Gryce, and led her into the presence of the Superintendent.
She was at this moment quite a different person from what she had been in the carriage. All that was girlish in her aspect or appealing in her bearing had faded away, evidently forever, and left in its place something at once so desperate and so deadly, that she seemed not only a woman but one of a very determined6 and dangerous nature. Her manner, however, was quiet, and it was only in her eye that one could see how near she was to frenzy7.
She spoke8 before the Superintendent could address her.
"Sir," said she, "I have been brought here on account of a fearful crime I was unhappy enough to witness. I myself am innocent of that crime, but, so far as I know, there is no other person living save the guilty man who committed it, who can tell you how or why or by whom it was done. One man has been arrested for it and another has not. If you will give me two weeks of complete freedom, I will point out to you which is the veritable man of blood, and may Heaven have mercy on his soul!"
"She is mad," signified the Superintendent in by-play to Mr. Gryce.
But the latter shook his head; she was not mad yet.
"I know," she continued, without a hint of the[Pg 347] timidity which seemed natural to her under other circumstances, "that this must seem a presumptuous10 request from one like me, but it is only by granting it that you will ever be able to lay your hand on the murderer of Mrs. Van Burnam. For I will never speak if I cannot speak in my own way and at my own time. The agonies I have suffered must have some compensation. Otherwise I should die of horror and my grief."
"And how do you hope to gain compensation by this delay?" expostulated the Superintendent. "Would you not meet with more satisfaction in denouncing him here and now before he can pass another night in fancied security?"
But she only repeated: "I have said two weeks, and two weeks I must have. Two weeks in which to come and go as I please. Two weeks!" And no argument they could advance succeeded in eliciting11 from her any other response or in altering in any way her air of quiet determination with its underlying12 suggestion of frenzy.
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BOOK IV. THE END OF A GREAT MYSTERY. 36. THE RESULT.
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38. A WHITE SATIN GOWN.
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