The detective, seeking
for some object upon whom to vent the growing irritation which
seemed to possess him, made Bailey the scapegoat of his wrath.
"I guess we can do without you for the present!" he said, with an
angry frown at the latter. Bailey flushed, then remembered himself,
and left the room submissively, with the air of a well-trained
servant accepting an unmerited rebuke. The detective turned at once
to Miss Cornelia.
"Now I want a few words with you!"
"Which means that you mean to do all the talking!" said Miss Cornelia
acidly. "Very well! But first I want to show you something. Will
you come here, please, Mr. Anderson?"
She started for the alcove.
"I've examined that staircase," said the detective.
"Not with me!" insisted Miss Cornelia. "I have something to show
you."
He followed her unwillingly up the stairs, his whole manner seeming
to betray a complete lack of confidence in the theories of all
amateur sleuths in general and spinster detectives of sixty-five in
particular. Their footsteps died away up the alcove stairs. The
living-room was left vacant for an instant.
Vacant? Only in seeming. The moment that Miss Cornelia and the
detective had passed up the stairs, the crouching, mysterious
Unknown, behind the settee, began to move. The French window-door
opened--a stealthy figure passed through it silently to be
swallowed up in the darkness of the terrace.
And poor Lizzie, entering the room at that moment, saw a hand
covered with blood reach back and gropingly, horribly, through the
broken pane, refasten the lock.
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