Her eyes flashed.
"I"ll ask you that! Some one person who, knowing Courtleigh Fleming well, probably knows of the existence of a Hidden Room in this house and who, finding us in occupation of the house, has tried to get rid of me in two ways. First, by frightening me with anonymous threats--and, second, by urging me to leave. Someone, who very possibly entered this house tonight shortly before the murder and slipped up that staircase!"
The detective had listened to her outburst with unusual thoughtfulness.
A certain wonder--perhaps at her shrewdness, perhaps at an unexpected confirmation of certain ideas of his own--grew upon his face. Now he jerked out two words.
"The Doctor?"
Miss Cornelia knitted on as if every movement of her needles added one more link to the strong chain of probabilities she was piecing together.
"When Doctor Wells said he was leaving here earlier in the evening for the Johnsons" he did not go there," she observed. "He was not expected to go there. I found that out when I telephoned."
"The Doctor!" repeated the detective, his eyes narrowing, his head beginning to sway from side to side like the head of some great cat just before a spring.
"As you know," Miss Cornelia went on, "I had a supplementary bolt placed on that terrace door today." She nodded toward the door that gave access into the alcove from the terrace. "Earlier this evening Doctor Wells said that he had bolted it, when he had left it open--purposely, as I now realize, in order that he might return later.
You may also recall that Doctor Wells took a sc.r.a.p of paper from Richard Fleming"s hand and tried to conceal it--why did he do that?"
She paused for a second. Then she changed her tone a little.
"May I ask you to look at this?"
She displayed the piece of paper on which Doctor Wells had started to write the prescription for her sleeping-powders--and now her strategy with the doctor"s bag and the soot Jack Bailey had got from the fireplace stood revealed. A sharp, black imprint of a man"s right thumb--the Doctor"s--stood out on the paper below the broken line of writing. The Doctor had not noticed the staining of his hand by the blackened bag handle, or, noticing, had thought nothing of it--but the blackened bag handle had been a trap, and he had left an indelible piece of evidence behind him. It now remained to test the value of this evidence.
Miss Cornelia handed the paper to Anderson silently. But her eyes were bright with pardonable vanity at the success of her little piece of strategy.
"A thumb-print," muttered Anderson. "Whose is it?"
"Doctor Wells," said Miss Cornelia with what might have been a little crow of triumph in anyone not a Van Gorder.
Anderson looked thoughtful. Then he felt in his pocket for a magnifying gla.s.s, failed to find it, muttered, and took the reading gla.s.s Miss Cornelia offered him.
"Try this," she said. "My whole case hangs on my conviction that that print and the one out there on the stair rail are the same."
He put down the paper and smiled at her ironically. "Your case!" he said. "You don"t really believe you need a detective at all, do you?"
"I will only say that so far your views and mine have failed to coincide. If I am right about that fingerprint, then you may be right about my private opinion."
And on that he went out, rather grimly, paper and reading gla.s.s in hand, to make his comparison.
It was then that Beresford came in, a new and slightly rigid Beresford, and crossed to her at once.
"Miss Van Gorder," he said, all the flippancy gone from his voice, "may I ask you to make an excuse and call your gardener here?"
Dale started uncontrollably at the ominous words, but Miss Cornelia betrayed no emotion except in the increased rapidity of her knitting.
"The gardener? Certainly, if you"ll touch that bell," she said pleasantly.
Beresford stalked to the bell and rang it. The three waited--Dale in an agony of suspense.
The detective re-entered the room by the alcove stairs, his mien unfathomable by any of the anxious glances that sought him out at once.
"It"s no good, Miss Van Gorder," he said quietly. "The prints are not the same."
"Not the same!" gasped Miss Cornelia, unwilling to believe her ears.
Anderson laid down the paper and the reading gla.s.s with a little gesture of dismissal.
"If you think I"m mistaken, I"ll leave it to any unprejudiced person or your own eyesight. Thumbprints never lie," he said in a flat, convincing voice. Miss Cornelia stared at him--disappointment written large on her features. He allowed himself a little ironic smile.
"Did you ever try a good cigar when you wanted to think?" he queried suavely, puffing upon his own.
But Miss Cornelia"s spirit was too broken by the collapse of her dearly loved and adroitly managed scheme for her to take up the gauge of battle he offered.
"I still believe it was the Doctor," she said stubbornly. But her tones were not the tones of utter conviction which she had used before.
"And yet," said the detective, ruthlessly demolishing another link in her broken chain of evidence, "the Doctor was in this room tonight, according to your own statement, when the anonymous letter came through the window."
Miss Cornelia gazed at him blankly, for the first time in her life at a loss for an appropriately sharp retort. It was true--the Doctor had been here in the room beside her when the stone bearing the last anonymous warning had crashed through the windowpane. And yet--
Billy"s entrance in answer to Beresford"s ring made her mind turn to other matters for the moment. Why had Beresford"s manner changed so, and what was he saying to Billy now?
"Tell the gardener Miss Van Gorder wants him and don"t say we"re all here," the young lawyer commanded the butler sharply. Billy nodded and disappeared. Miss Cornelia"s back began to stiffen--she didn"t like other people ordering her servants around like that.
The detective, apparently, had somewhat of the same feeling.
"I seem to have plenty of help in this case!" he said with obvious sarcasm, turning to Beresford.
The latter made no reply. Dale rose anxiously from her chair, her lips quivering.
"Why have you sent for the gardener?" she inquired haltingly.
Beresford deigned to answer at last.
"I"ll tell you that in a moment," he said with a grim tightening of his lips.
There was a fateful pause, for an instant, while Dale roved nervously from one side of the room to the other. Then Jack Bailey came into the room--alone.
He seemed to sense danger in the air. His hands clenched at his sides, but except for that tiny betrayal of emotion, he still kept his servant"s pose.
"You sent for me?" he queried of Miss Cornelia submissively, ignoring the glowering Beresford.
But Beresford would be ignored no longer. He came between them before Miss Cornelia had time to answer.
"How long has this man been in your employ?" he asked brusquely, manner tense.
Miss Cornelia made one final attempt at evasion. "Why should that interest you?" she parried, answering his question with an icy question of her own.
It was too late. Already Bailey had read the truth in Beresford"s eyes.