She looked at him, half-puzzled, and, I fancied, half-frightened, too.
"Anything I can tell you—of course, ask me," she said.
"Had your father any enemies who might desire his death?" shot out
Kennedy, almost without warning.
"No," she answered slowly, still watching him carefully, then adding hastily: "Of course, you know, no one who tries to do anything is absolutely without enemies, though."
"I mean," repeated Craig, carefully noting a certain hesitation in her tone, "was there any one who, for reasons best known to himself, might have murdered him in a way peculiarly likely under the circumstances, say, with a dagger?"
Inez flashed a quick glance at Kennedy, as if to inquire just how much or how little he really knew. I got the impression from it, at least, that she was holding back some suspicion for a reason that perhaps she would not even have admitted to herself.
I saw that Norton was also following the line of Kennedy's questioning keenly, though he said nothing.
Before Kennedy could take up the lead again, her maid, Juanita, a very pretty girl of Spanish and Indian descent, entered softly.
"Mr. Lockwood," she whispered, but not so low that we could not hear.
"Won't you ask him to come in, Nita?" she replied.
A moment later a young man pushed open the door—a tall, clean-cut young fellow, whose face bore the tan of a sun much stronger than any about New York. As I took his appraisal, I found him unmistakably of the type of American soldier of fortune who has been carried by the wander-spirit down among the romantic republics to the south of our own.