Page:The Black Camel (IA blackcamel0000earl).djvu/236

“Yes. She was often that way, but this was worse, somehow. ‘Denny Mayo won't die, Julie,’ she said. ‘He’ll come back to disgrace me yet.’ Then she urged me to get the ring, and of course I did. She told me we'd find something else to sell later. Just then she was too upset to discuss it. In the afternoon, I saw her crying over Denny Mayo’s picture.”

“Ah,” cried Chan, “that was portrait of Denny Mayo mounted on green mat?”

“It was.”

“Continue, please.”

“Last night,” Julie went on, “when Jimmy and I made our terrible discovery in the pavilion, I thought at once of what Shelah had said. Denny would come back to disgrace her yet. Somehow, I thought, his death must be connected with Shelah’s. If only his name could be kept out of it—otherwise I didn’t know what scandal might be revealed. So I slipped Denny’s ring from her finger. Later, when I heard mention of the photograph, I ran up-stairs and tore it into bits, hiding them under a potted plant.”

Chan’s eyes opened wide. “So it was you who performed that act? And later—when pieces of photograph scattered into wind—was it you who concealed large number of them?”

“Oh, no—you’ve forgotten—I wasn’t in the room when that happened. And even if I’d been there, I wouldn't have been clever enough to think of that. Some one came to my aid at a critical moment. Who? I haven’t the least idea, but I was grateful when I heard about it.”

Chan sighed. “You have made everything a delay,” he remarked, “and caused me to waste much precious time. I can admire your loyalty to this dead