I feel it. I don't mean
to be inquisitive, old chap, but I'm not believing Departmental 'facts'
any more. I'd make a topping good wager you're not the sort they make
you out. And so I'd like to know--just why--you killed Judge Kirkstone?"
Keith's two fists knotted in the center of the table. Conniston saw his
blue eyes darken for an instant with a savage fire. In that moment
there came a strange silence over the cabin, and in that silence the
incessant and maddening yapping of the little white foxes rose shrilly
over the distant booming and rumbling of the ice.
II
"Why did I kill Judge Kirkstone?" Keith repeated the words slowly.
His clenched hands relaxed, but his eyes held the steady glow of fire.
"What do the Departmental 'facts' tell you, Conniston?"
"That you murdered him in cold blood, and that the honor of the Service
is at stake until you are hung."
"There's a lot in the view-point, isn't there? What if I said I didn't
kill Judge Kirkstone?"
Conniston leaned forward a little too eagerly. The deadly paroxysm
shook his frame again, and when it was over his breath came pantingly,
as if hissing through a sieve. "My God, not Sunday--or Saturday," he
breathed.
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