"Erne, show Mr. Boyne out, won't you?"
Ernestine completed the job when she answered—in Ina Vandeman's voice, also—
"Yes, dear; I will." It was only the scraps of me that she swept out through the front door.
I stood on the porch and mopped my brow. Across, there at the Gilbert place was Worth himself, charging around the grounds with Vandeman and a lot of other decorators, pruning shears in hand, going for a thicket of bamboos that shut off the vegetable garden. At one side Barbara stood alone, looking, it seemed to me, rather depressed. I made for her. She met me with,
"I know what you've been doing. Skeet came to me about it while Ina was phoning home from the country club."
"Well—she should worry! I've just finished with her list. Got an unbreakable alibi."
"She would have," Barbara said listlessly. "She wasn't at the study that evening."
"Huh! I worked on your tip that she was."
Barbara had pulled off the little stitched hat she wore; yet the deep flush on her cheeks was neither from sun nor an afternoon's hard work. It, and the quick straightening of her figure, the lift of her chin, had to do with me and my activities.
"Mr. Boyne," the black eyes came around to me with a flash, "do you suspect me of trying to pay off a spite on Ina Vandeman?"