Then after listening gravely to Vail’s account of the affair and with growing impatience to Joshua Q. Mosely’s longer and more dramatic recital, Quimby announced that the interrogation would begin. Thaxton was the first witness.
“Mr. Vail,” asked the chief, “what did you lose? I don’t see your list on this inventory of stolen goods you’ve made out for me.”
Vail looked blank.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “I never thought to look. I was so bothered about the others’ losses I clean forgot—”
“Suppose you go and look now,” hinted the chief. “Be as quick as you can. We’ll delay the interrogation till you come back.”
Thaxton returned to the improvised courtroom in less than three minutes.
“Not a thing missing, so far as I can see,” he reported. “And nothing disturbed. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Chief. I seem to be the only one who escaped a visit from the thief.”
Clive Creede had been slumping low in the chair which Vail had brought him. Now, breathing hard, he got weakly to his feet and lurched through the open French window out onto the moonlit veranda.
He made his exit so unobtrusively that no one but Doris Lane chanced to note it. The girl, at sight of his haggard face and stumbling gait, followed Creede out into the moonlight. She found him leaning against one of the veranda pillars, drawing in great breaths of the cool night air.
“Are you worse?” she asked in quick anxiety. “Why don’t you go to bed? You’re not fit to be up.”