I would even describe the appearance of the person driving this cutter.

No one by the greatest stretch of imagination would be apt to associate this description with Carmel; but it might set the authorities thinking, and if by any good chance a cutter containing a person wearing a derby hat and a coat with an extra high collar should have been seen on this portion of the road, or if, as I earnestly hoped, the snow had left any signs of another horse having been tethered in the clump of trees opposite the one where I had concealed my own, enough of the truth might be furnished to divide public opinion and start fresh inquiry.
That a woman's form had sought concealment under these masculine habiliments would not, could not, strike anybody's mind.

Nothing in the crime had suggested a woman's presence, much less a woman's active agency.
On the contrary, all the appearances, save such as I believed known to myself alone, spoke so openly of a man's strength, a man's methods, a man's appetite, and a man's brutal daring that the suspicion which had naturally fallen on myself as the one and only person implicated, would in shifting pass straight to another man, and, if he could not be found, return to me, or be lost in a maze of speculation.

This seemed so evident after a long and close study of the situation that I was ready with my confession when Mr.Clifton next came.

I had even forestalled it in a short interview forced upon me by the assistant district attorney and Chief Hudson.