"Et tu, Brute!" sighed Kent, leaning back against his pillows.
"Isn't it possible for a decent man to kill another man and not be
called a liar when he tells about it? Why do so many believe that
I lie?"

"They don't," said the girl. "They believe you--now. You have gone
so completely into the details of the murder in your confession
that they are quite convinced. It would be too bad if you lived,
for you surely would be hanged. Your lie sounds and reads like the
truth. But I know it is a lie. You did not kill John Barkley."

"And the reason for your suspicion?"

For fully half a minute the girl's eyes rested on, his own. Again
they seemed to be looking through him and into him. "Because I
know the man who DID kill him," she said quietly, "and it was not
you."

Kent made a mighty effort to appear calm. He reached for a cigar
from the box that Cardigan had placed on his bed, and nibbled the
end of it. "Has some one else been confessing?" he asked.

She shook her head the slightest bit.

"Did you--er--see this other gentleman kill John Barkley?" he
insisted.

"No."