He hasn't got either those securities or the money from
them and you know it. It's in this house and you know that, too!"
"In this house?" repeated the Doctor as if stalling for time.
"In this house! Tonight, when you claimed to be making a
professional call, you were in this house--and I think you were
on that staircase when Richard Fleming was killed!"
"No, Anderson, I'll swear I was not!" The Doctor might be acting,
but if he was, it was incomparable acting. The terror in his voice
seemed too real to be feigned.
But Anderson was remorseless.
"I'll tell you this," he continued. "Miss Van Gorder very cleverly
got a thumbprint of yours tonight. Does that mean anything to you?"
His eyes bored into the Doctor--the eyes of a poker player bluffing
on a hidden card. But the Doctor did not flinch.
"Nothing," he said firmly. "I have not been upstairs in this house
in three months."
The accent of truth in his voice seemed so unmistakable that even
Anderson's shrewd brain was puzzled by it. But he persisted in his
attempt to wring a confession from this latest suspect.
"Before Courtleigh Fleming died--did he tell you anything about a
Hidden Room in this house?" he queried cannily.
The Doctor's confident air of honesty lessened, a furtive look
appeared in his eyes.
"No," he insisted, but not as convincingly as he had made his
previous denial.
The detective hammered at the point again.
"You haven't been trying to frighten these women out of here with
anonymous letters so you could get in?"
"No.
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