"Hadn't you better go?" was the contemptuous retort.

"You refuse to answer any further questions?"

"I refuse to buy your proffered friendship--whatever that may mean."

"Have I offered to sell it?"

"I gathered as much."

Ingerman rose. He was still master of himself, though his lanky body was
taut with rage. He spoke calmly and with remarkable restraint.

"Go through what I have said, and discover, if you can, the slightest
hint of any suggested condonation of your offenses, whether avowed or
merely suspected. I shall prove beyond dispute that you came between me
and my wife. Don't hug the delusion that your three years' limit will
save you. It will not. I wish you well of your attempt to prove that I
was a consenting party to divorce proceedings. I came here to look you
over. I have done so, and have arrived at a very definite opinion. I,
also, have been interviewed by the police, and any unfavorable views they
may have formed concerning me as the outcome of your ex parte statements
are more than counteracted by the ugly facts of a ghastly murder. You
were here shortly before eleven o'clock last night. My wife was here,
too, and alive. This morning she was found dead, by you. At eleven
o'clock last night I was playing bridge with three city men in my flat.
When the news of the murder reached me to-day my first thought, after the
shock of it had passed, was:--'That fellow, Grant, may be innocently
involved in a terrible crime, and I may figure as the chief witness