"She's going home to Scotland, I suppose?"
"N-no." Miss Ocky hesitated, then added calmly, "She is going to a sister in New Orleans."
"Oh," said Creighton, and it seemed to him that some one else must have uttered the word, so far away did it sound. "Very nice for her."
"Let's—forget her," suggested Miss Ocky.
There was no talk from balcony to balcony that night. Miss Ocky begged off on the plea of fatigue, and it was fairly evident that the plea was perfectly honest. She acted as if she were tired, she looked so, and Creighton, grimly comparing the fiction of New Orleans with the fact of Montreal, could no longer doubt that she had every reason to be tired, mentally and physically.
He was none too fit himself when he came down to breakfast the next morning after a miserable night's rest. He could scarcely eat anything. He rose from the table finally and sped into the front hall at the sound of a motorcycle, and when he accepted two wires from a messenger and dismissed him, his powers of resistance were pitifully inadequate to withstand the greatest shock he was ever to receive in all his life.
The first was a night-letter from Martin, the finger-print expert.
"Numerous prints on cover of took. Freshest superimposed on others are one of thumb top cover four of finger tips on bottom, made by number eight in collection you sent me. Characteristics distinctive. No possibility of error. Martin."
Number eight of the collection he had made! Made since the death of Simon Varr, then, and by some one in the household! Here was a tangible clue to the truth at last!
He took his memorandum book from his pocket and turned its pages with fingers that trembled slightly until he found the list that he had started with Betty Blake. Swiftly, his eyes went to number eight.