But Dale could bear it no longer. The sight of her lover, beaten, submissive, his head bowed, waiting obediently like a common criminal for the detective to lock his wrists in steel broke down her last defenses. She rushed into the center of the room, between Bailey and the detective, her eyes wild with terror, her words stumbling over each other in her eagerness to get them out.
"Oh, no! I can't stand it! I'll tell you everything!" she cried frenziedly. "He got to the foot of the stair-case - Richard Fleming, I mean," she was facing the detective now, "and he had the blue-print you've been talking about. I had told him Jack Bailey was here as the gardener and he said if I screamed he would tell that. I was desperate. I threatened him with the revolver but he took it from me. Then when I tore the blue-print from him - he was shot - from the stairs - "
"By Bailey!" interjected Beresford angrily.
"I didn't even know he was in the house!" Bailey's answer was as instant as it was hot. Meanwhile, the Doctor had entered the room, hardly noticed, in the middle of Dale's confession, and now stood watching the scene intently from a post by the door.
"What did you do with the blue-print?" The detective's voice beat at Dale like a whip.
"I put it first in the neck of my dress - " she faltered. "Then, when I found you were watching me, I hid it somewhere else."
Her eyes fell on the Doctor. She saw his hand steal out toward the knob of the door. Was he going to run away on some pretext before she could finish her story? She gave a sigh of relief when Billy, re-entering with the key to the front door, blocked any such attempt at escape.
Mechanically she watched Billy cross to the table, lay the key upon it, and return to the hall without so much as a glance at the tense, suspicious circle of faces focused upon herself and her lover.
"I put it - somewhere else," she repeated, her eyes going back to the Doctor. "Did you give it to Bailey?"
"No - I hid it - and then I told where it was - to the Doctor - " Dale swayed on her feet. All turned surprisedly toward the Doctor. Miss Cornelia rose from her chair.
The Doctor bore the battery of eyes unflinchingly. "That's rather inaccurate," he said, with a tight little smile. "You told me where you had placed it, but when I went to look for it, it was gone."
"Are you quite sure of that?" queried Miss Cornelia acidly.
"Absolutely," he said. He ignored the rest of the party, addressing himself directly to Anderson.
"She said she had hidden it inside one of the rolls that were on the tray on that table," he continued in tones of easy explanation, approaching the table as he did so, and tapping it with the box of sleeping-powders he had brought for Miss Cornelia.
"She was in such distress that I finally went to look for it. It wasn't there."
"Do you realize the significance of this paper?" Anderson boomed at once.
"Nothing, beyond the fact that Miss Ogden was afraid it linked her with the crime." The Doctor's voice was very clear and firm.
Anderson pondered an instant. Then -
"I'd like to have a few minutes with the Doctor alone," he said somberly.
The group about him dissolved at once. Miss Cornelia, her arm around her niece's waist, led the latter gently to the door. As the two lovers passed each other a glance flashed between them - a glance, pathetically brief, of longing and love. Dale's finger tips brushed Bailey's hand gently in passing.
"Beresford," commanded the detective, "take Bailey to the library and see that he stays there."
Beresford tapped his pocket with a significant gesture and motioned Bailey to the door. Then they, too, left the room. The door closed. The Doctor and the detective were alone.
The detective spoke at once - and surprisingly.
"Doctor, I'll have that blue-print!" he said sternly, his eyes the color of steel. The Doctor gave him a wary little glance.
"But I've just made the statement that I didn't find the blue-print," he affirmed flatly.
"I heard you!" Anderson's voice was very dry. "Now this situation is between you and me, Doctor Wells." His forefinger sought the Doctor's chest. "It has nothing to do with that poor fool of a cashier. 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. Certainly not." But again the Doctor's air had that odd mixture of truth and falsehood in it.
The detective paused for an instant.
"Let me see your key ring!" he ordered. The Doctor passed it over silently. The detective glanced at the keys - then, suddenly, his revolver glittered in his other hand.
The Doctor watched him anxiously. A puff of wind rattled the panes of the French windows. The storm, quieted for a while, was gathering its strength for a fresh unleashing of its dogs of thunder.
The detective stepped to the terrace door, opened it, an