"At six-thirty o'clock last Thursday evening," said the woman, "I
went to the rooms of Captain Fraser-Freer, in Adelphi Terrace. An
argument arose. I seized from his table an Indian dagger that was
lying there--I stabbed him just above the heart!"
In that room in Scotland Yard a tense silence fell. For the first
time we were all conscious of a tiny clock on the inspector's desk,
for it ticked now with a loudness sudden and startling. I gazed
at the faces about me. Bray's showed a momentary surprise--then
the mask fell again. Lieutenant Fraser-Freer was plainly amazed.
On the face of Colonel Hughes I saw what struck me as an open sneer.
"Go on, Countess," he smiled.
She shrugged her shoulders and turned toward him a disdainful back.
Her eyes were all for Bray.
"It's very brief, the story," she said hastily--I thought almost
apologetically. "I had known the captain in Rangoon. My husband
was in business there--an exporter of rice--and Captain
Fraser-Freer came often to our house. We--he was a charming man,
the captain--"
"Go on!" ordered Hughes.
"We fell desperately in love," said the countess. "When he returned
to England, though supposedly on a furlough, he told me he would
never return to Rangoon. He expected a transfer to Egypt. So it
was arranged that I should desert my husband and follow on the next
boat.
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