“Write me his name.  I will do the same for you.”

XIV

A LOOP OF SILK

Sweetwater hesitated.

“I am very fond of the one of your own choosing,” he smiled, “but if you insist——­”

Mr. Gryce was already writing.

In another moment the two slips were passed in exchange across the table.

Instantly, a simultaneous exclamation left the lips of both.

Each read a name he was in no wise prepared to see.  They had been following diverging lines instead of parallel ones; and it took some few minutes for them to adjust themselves to this new condition.

Then Mr. Gryce spoke: 

“What led you into loading up Correy with an act which to accept as true would oblige us to deny every premise we have been at such pains to establish?”

“Because—­and I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Gryce, since our conclusions are so different—­I found it easier to attribute this deed of folly—­or crime, if we can prove it such—­to a man young in years than to one old enough to know better.”

“Very good; that is undoubtedly an excellent reason.”

As this was said with an accent we will for want of a better word call dry, Sweetwater, hardy as he was, flushed to his ears.  But then any prick from Mr. Gryce went very deep with him.

“Perhaps,” he ventured, “you will give even less indulgence to what I have to add in way of further excuse.”

“I shall have to hear it first.”

“Correy is a sport, an incorrigible one; it is his only weakness.  He bets like an Englishman—­not for the money, for the sums he risks are small, but for the love of it—­the fun—­the transient excitement It might be”—­here Sweetwater’s words came slowly and with shamefaced pauses—­“that the shooting of that arrow—­I believe I said something like this before—­was the result of a dare.”

A halt took place in the quick tattoo which Mr. Gryce’s fingers were drumming out on the table-top.  It was infinitesimal in length, but it gave Sweetwater courage to add: 

“Then, I hear that he wishes to marry a rich girl and shrinks from proposing to her on account of his small salary.”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Nothing so far as I can see.  I am only elaborating the meager report lying there under your hand.  But I recognize my folly.  You ordered me to dream, and I did so.  Cannot we forget my unworthy vaporings and enter upon the consideration of what may prove more profitable?”

Here he glanced down at the slip of paper he himself held—­the slip which Mr. Gryce had handed him with a single word written on it, and that word a name.

“In a moment,” was Mr. Gryce’s answer.  “First explain to me how, with the facts all in mind, and your chart before your eyes, you reconciled Correy’s position on the side staircase two minutes after the shooting with your theory of a quick escape to the court by means of the door back of the tapestry?  Haven’t you hurried matters to get him so far in such a short space of time?”