perhaps you’ll believe what I say if it’s against myself. She hated me, and I wouldn’t let her alone. My wife was jealous. Do you see—is it clear? Oh, we’re in damned bad, my wife and I, but we’re not in so bad as you’re trying to make out.” He jumped to his feet, the shine of sweat on his forehead.

[Pg 178]

[Pg 178]

“I don’t see, Mr. Stokes,” said Rawson quietly, “where you get that. We haven’t made out anything yet.”

“Oh, I can see. We were the only people outside the house—that’s enough to build a theory on. And motives—who had a motive? That’s the way you go to work. Find a motive, fit some one to it. My wife had a motive, that’s sufficient. Don’t ask what kind of woman she is, don’t look any further, you have to get some one and she’s the easiest. Christ!” he cried, throwing out his arms with a dramatic gesture, “it would make the gods laugh!”

“Mr. Stokes, if you’d take this calmly——”

“Calmly! Seeing what you think and where you’re trying to land us! But just let me ask you something.” He thrust his head forward, the chin advanced, the eyebrows in arched semicircles rising almost to his hair. “Do you happen to remember there were five hundred people on the island that afternoon? Any kind of person could have been here on any kind of errand.”

[Pg 179]

[Pg 179]

Rawson answered with a slight show of impatience:

“Just leave our business to us, Mr. Stokes. You’re here to answer questions.”

“Oh, that’s plain—questions all pointing one way. But there were other people on the island besides that crowd—besides us—who might have had a motive. Isn’t anger a motive?”

He projected the sentence with a malevolent force, the words enunciated with an actor’s incisive diction.

“Anger!” ejaculated Williams. “Where does that come in?”

“Here, on Gull Island. Oh, we’ve had more than jealousy. Rage and spite will go as far. Take your eyes off my wife and me for a moment—look somewhere else.”

Rawson’s face 

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