Dale had failed with the Doctor. When Lizzie's screams once more had called the startled household to the living-room, she knew she had failed. She followed in mechanically, watched an irritated Anderson send the Pride of Kerry to bed and. threaten to lock her up, and listened vaguely to the conversation between her aunt and the detective that followed it, without more than casual interest.
Nevertheless, that conversation was to have vital results later on.
"Your point about that thumbprint on the stair rail is very interesting," Anderson said with a certain respect. "But just what does it prove?"
"It points down," said Miss Cornelia, still glowing with the memory of the whistle of surprise the detective had given when she had shown him the strange thumbprint on the rail of the alcove stairs.
"It does," he admitted. "But what then?"
Miss Cornelia tried to put her case as clearly and tersely as possible.
"It shows that somebody stood there for some time, listening to my niece and Richard Fleming in this room below," she said.
"All right - I'll grant that to save argument," retorted the detective. "But the moment that shot was fired the lights came on. If somebody on that staircase shot him, and then came down and took the blue-print, Miss Ogden would have seen him."
He turned upon Dale. "Did you?"
She hesitated. Why hadn't she thought of such an explanation before? But now - it would sound too flimsy!
"No, nobody came down," she admitted candidly. The detective's face altered, grew menacing. Miss Cornelia once more had put herself between him and Dale.
"Now, Mr. Anderson - " she warned.
The detective was obviously trying to keep his temper.
"I'm not hounding this girl!" he said doggedly. "I haven't said yet that she committed the murder - but she took that blue-print and I want it!"
"You want it to connect her with the murder," parried Miss Cornelia.
The detective threw up his hands.
"It's rather reasonable to suppose that I might want to return the funds to the Union Bank, isn't it?" he queried in tones of heavy sarcasm. "Provided they're here," he added doubtfully.
Miss Cornelia resolved upon comparative frankness.
"I see," she said. "Well, I'll tell you this much, Mr. Anderson, and I'll ask you to believe me as a lady. Granting that at one time my niece knew something of that blue-print - at this moment we do not know where it is or who has it."
Her words had the unmistakable ring of truth. The very oath from the detective that succeeded them showed his recognition of the fact.
"Damnation," he muttered. "That's true, is it?"
"That's true," said Miss Cornelia firmly. A silence of troubled thoughts fell upon the three. Miss Cornelia took out her knitting.
"Did you ever try knitting when you wanted to think?" she queried sweetly, after a pause in which the detective tramped from one side of the room to the other, brows knotted, eyes bent on the floor.
"No," grunted the detective. He took out a cigar - bit off the end with a savage snap of teeth - lit it - resumed his pacing.
"You should, sometimes," continued Miss Cornelia, watching his troubled movements with a faint light of mockery in her eyes. "I find it very helpful."
"I don't need knitting to think straight," rasped Anderson indignantly. Miss Cornelia's eyes danced.
"I wonder!" she said with caustic affability. "You seem to have so much evidence left over."
The detective paused and glared at her helplessly.
"Did you ever hear of the man who took a clock apart - and when he put it together a gain, he had enough left over to make another clock?" she twitted.
The detective, ignoring the taunt, crossed quickly to Dale.
"What do you mean by saying that paper isn't where you put it?" he demanded in tones of extreme severity. Miss Cornelia replied for her niece. "She hasn't said that."
The detective made an impatient movement of his hand and walked away - as if to get out of the reach of the indefatigable spinster's tongue. But Miss Cornelia had not finished with him yet, by any means.
"Do you believe in circumstantial evidence?" she asked him with seeming ingenuousness. "It's my business," said the detective stolidly. Miss Cornelia smiled.
"While you have been investigating," she announced, "I, too, have not been idle."
The detective gave a barking laugh. She let it pass. "To me," she continued, "it is perfectly obvious that one intelligence has been at work behind many of the things that have occurred in this house."
Now Anderson observed her with a new respect. "Who?" he grunted tersely.
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 theterrace. "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 scrap 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