Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Halsey said sternly. "Gertrude, when you brought down a revolver that night for Jack to take with him, what one did you bring? Mine?"
Gertrude was defiant now.
"No. Yours was loaded, and I was afraid of what Jack might do. I gave him one I have had for a year or two. It was empty."
Halsey threw up both hands despairingly.
"If that isn't like a girl!" he said. "Why didn't you do what I asked you to, Gertrude? You send Bailey off with an empty gun, and throw mine in a tulip bed, of all places on earth! Mine was a thirty-eight caliber. ”

“ Halsey had his hand over my lips before I finished, and in that position we stared each at the other, our stricken glances crossing.
"The revolver—my revolver—thrown into the tulip bed!" he muttered to himself. "Thrown perhaps from an upper window: you say it was buried deep. Her prostration ever since, her—Aunt Ray, you don't think it was Gertrude who fell down the clothes chute?" ”

“ She's willing to take me, war governor or no, provided her mother consents. She isn't overly-fond of her stepfather, but she adores her mother. And now, can't you see where this thing puts me? Down and out, with all of them."
"But the whole thing is absurd," I argued. "And besides, Gertrude's sworn statement that you left before Arnold Armstrong came would clear you at once."
Halsey got up and began to pace the room, and the air of cheerfulness dropped like a mask.
"She can't swear it," he said finally. "Gertrude's story was true as far as it went, but she didn't tell everything. ”