“I see,” said Burgess. “I’ve seen for some time. Well, Mr. Mason?”
Andrew looked at us all for a few seconds without speaking. It was only too evident that we all saw—all except Aunt Mildred, of course. It was also evident that he no longer cared. Anne’s revelation must have been the final straw. When he spoke, it was in a quiet, resigned, relaxed, placid voice.
“I do not wish to argue,” he said. “Sometimes I’ve thought, from the things you’ve said, that you knew all along, and were only waiting for a suitable moment. The ironical thing is that you never had the right reason. You don’t see it now. You thought it was because I wanted control of the business. I did want that. But I could have waited—if my uncle had been going along in the ordinary way, that is. But he wasn’t. Do you know what his association with the Freemen would have done to the company? It would have ruined it—ruined it—and you were all too stupid to see it. Well, I wasn’t. I saw it plainly enough. I knew what it would mean. If he’d gone on as he meant to do, there wouldn’t have been any business for me to run even if I finally did get control. That motor-car accident would have solved everything—if it had worked—but it didn’t. I’d lived for that business. I never remember really thinking of anything else. My family”—he slowly and placidly surveyed his parents, and I could not tell what was in that look; he did not look at his wife—“my family never talked of anything else. ‘Andrew’ll run the business. Uncle Hugh would be lost without Andrew. You’ve got to be even better than Uncle Hugh!’ I never cared about anything else, not really, and he was going to ruin it. So I killed him!”
We sat frozen under the quiet spell of words. Then Andrew broke from the room and ran upstairs. Burgess pursued, but he was too late. Andrew gained his own room and locked the door. By the time they had forced it open, Andrew was dead.