Fairbrother's name! and the man--

XXII. GUILT

Was he Wellgood? Sears? Who? A lover of the woman certainly; that was
borne in on us by the passion of his cry:

"Grizel! Grizel!"

But how here? and why such fury in Mr. Grey's face and such amazement in
that of the inspector?

This question was not to be answered offhand. Mr. Grey, advancing,
laid a finger on the man's shoulder. "Come," said he, "we will have our
conversation in another room."

The man, who, in dress and appearance looked oddly out of place in
those gorgeous rooms, shook off the stupor into which he had fallen and
started to follow the Englishman. A waiter crossed their track with the
soup for our table. Mr. Grey motioned him aside.

"Take that back," said he. "I have some business to transact with this
gentleman before I eat. I'll ring when I want you."

Then they entered where I was. As the door closed I caught sight of the
inspector's face turned earnestly toward me. In his eyes I read my duty,
and girded up my heart, as it were, to meet--what? In that moment it was
impossible to tell.

The next enlightened me. With a total ignoring of my presence, due
probably to his great excitement, Mr. Grey turned on his companion the
moment he had closed the door and, seizing him by the collar, cried:

"Fairbrother, you villain, why have you called on your wife like this?
Are you murderer as well as thief?"

Fairbrother! this man? Then who was he who was being nursed back to life
on the mountains beyond Santa Fe? Sears? Anything seemed possible in
that moment.

Meanwhile, dropping his hand from the other's throat as suddenly as he
had seized it, Mr. Grey caught up the stiletto from the table where he
had flung it, crying: "Do you recognize this?"

Ah, then I saw guilt!

In a silence worse than any cry, this so-called husband of the murdered
woman, the man on whom no suspicion had fallen, the man whom all had
thought a thousand miles away at the time of the deed, stared at the
weapon thrust under his eyes, while over his face passed all those
expressions of fear, abhorrence and detected guilt which, fool that I
was, I had expected to see reflected in response to the same test in Mr.
Grey's equable countenance.

The surprise and wonder of it held me chained to the spot. I was in a
state of stupefaction, so that I scarcely noted the broken fragments
at my feet. But the intruder noticed them. Wrenching his gaze from the
stiletto which Mr. Gr