"
"I?" He changed color. Twenty years of dunning boarders has made me
pretty sharp at reading faces, and he looked as uncomfortable as if he
owed me money. "I!" I knew then that I had been right about the voice.
It had been his.
"You!" I retorted. "You were here Sunday morning and spent some time
with the Ladleys. I am the old she-devil. I notice you didn't tell
your friend, Mr. Holcombe, about having been here on Sunday."
He was quick to recover. "I'll tell you all about it, Mrs. Pitman,"
he said smilingly. "You see, all my life, I have wished for an onyx
clock. It has been my ambition, my _Great Desire_. Leaving the house
that Sunday morning, and hearing the ticking of the clock up-stairs, I
recognized that it was an _onyx_ clock, clambered from my boat through
an upper window, and so reached it. The clock showed fight, but after
stunning it with a chair--"
"Exactly!" I said. "Then the thing Mrs. Ladley said she would not do
was probably to wind the clock?"
He dropped his bantering manner at once. "Mrs. Pitman," he said, "I
don't know what you heard or did not hear.
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