For answer Ackroyd groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

 

“It can’t be,” he said. “I’m mad even to think of such a thing. No, I won’t even

admit to you the wild suspicion that crossed my mind. I’ll tell you this much,

though. Something she said made me think that the person in question might be

actually among my household—but that can’t be so. I must have misunderstood

her.”

 

“What did you say to her?” I asked.

 

“What could I say? She saw, of course, the awful shock it had been to me. And

then there was the question, what was my duty in the matter?

 

She had made me, you see, an accessory after the fact. She saw all that, I

think, quicker than I did. I was stunned, you know. She asked me for twenty-four

hours—made me promise to do nothing till the end of that time. And she

steadfastly refused to give me the name of the scoundrel who had been

blackmailing her. I suppose she was afraid that I might go straight off and

hammer him, and then the fat would have been in the fire as far as she was

concerned. She told me that I should hear from her before twenty-four hours had

passed. My God! I swear to you, Sheppard, that it never entered my head what she

meant to do.

 

Suicide! And I drove her to it.”