He questioned her about the servants. Suspicion seemed to point to Evans, who had the run of the safe and might so easily have failed to lock it in the evening when she had put her mistress to bed. Lydia demurred at the idea of Evans' guilt. The girl had been with her for five years.
"I don't really think she has the courage to steal," she said.
"Do you know the circumstances of her life? Anything to make her feel in special need of money just now?" he inquired.
Lydia shook her head.
"I never see how servants spend their wages anyhow," she said. "But what makes me feel quite sure it isn't Evans is that I'm sure she would have confessed to me when I questioned her. Instead of that she's been packing my things for me just as usual."
O'Bannon cut the interview short by announcing that he'd see the sheriff. Lydia had expected—"dreaded" was her own word—that he would say something about the incidents of their last meeting. But he didn't. He left the room, saying as he went: "You'll wait here until I've had a talk with the girl."
His tone had a rising inflection of a question in it, but to Lydia it sounded like an order. She had had every intention of waiting, but now she began to contemplate the possibility of leaving at once. The car was at the door and her bags were on the car. How it would annoy him, she thought, if when he came back, instead of finding her patiently waiting to be civil, he learned that she had motored away, as much as to say: "It's your duty as an officer of the law to find my jewels, but it isn't my duty to be grateful to you."
Presently Miss Bennett and the sheriff came in together, talking—at least the sheriff was talking.
"It looks like it was her all right," he was saying, "and if so he'll get a confession out of her. That's why I sent for him. He's a great feller for getting folks to confess." Then with natural courtesy he turned to Lydia. "I was just saying to your friend, Miss Thorne, that O'Bannon's great on getting confessions."
"Really?" said Lydia. "I wonder why."