Kennedy had thus deftly shifted the picture to the little dancer. As he spoke, Irene Maddox leaned forward, her face burning with indignation at the mere mention of her hated rival.
“Paquita,” Kennedy continued, carefully choosing his words, “has been an enigma to me in this case. There is no use mincing matters. There had long been a feud in the family, before she appeared. I think there is no need for me here to elaborate how she has brought matters to a crisis, or the enmity which she stirred up.”
Mrs. Maddox murmured something bitterly under her breath, but Kennedy quickly changed the subject.
“We know, also, that Paquita met Shelby Maddox,” he hurried on. “In the minds of some it looked as though she might break Shelby, too. But it was just because of the reasons that made them think so that precisely the opposite happened. Strangely enough, the little dancer seems to have fallen in love with him herself.”
Out of the corner of my eye I was watching Winifred. Her face was set in deep lines as Kennedy went ahead in his merciless analysis of the case. Shelby colored, but said nothing, though his manner was of the man who might have said much, if he had not learned that defense was worse than silence. Winifred’s face questioned as plainly as words whether there must always be present that sinister shadow of Paquita. I wondered whether she was yet convinced that he had never loved the little dancer.
Kennedy seemed to feel the situation. “But,” he added, slowly and significantly, “in the mean time something else had happened. Shelby Maddox had met some one else.”
He had not dwelt on the gossip about Paquita. I could almost feel the relief of Shelby, for Paquita had been a cause of disagreement even between Mrs. Walcott and the others.
“Even this new turn of events was used in desperation by the criminal. In aiming a blow at Shelby, after having been defeated at every other point, as a last desperate resort an attempt was directed at Winifred Walcott herself. It was as though some one tried to strike at Shelby himself, and had decided that the surest way to control him was through some one whom he loved. Who was it,” he concluded, facing us pointedly, “that kidnapped Winifred, and why?”
As far as I was able to answer, it might have been anybody. I had even considered the possibility that Shelby might have carried her off himself in order to make her turn to him for protection. In fact, I had never been able to account for the presence of Sanchez with us at the time. Had I been mistaken in Sanchez?
“Attack after attack on those who were getting closer had failed,” continued Kennedy. “That being the case, those who might talk must be silenced. Mito was dead. Still Paquita remained. She, too, must be silenced. And so my suspicion, in turn, was thrown on her. By this cipher which I have here she was ordered to go to New York, in order to mislead me. The plan failed. Always in the most clever schemes of crime, they fail at some point. Unless I am very much mistaken, Paquita has seen through the designs. What she will do I do not profess to know. For, in addition to the mixed motives of her hopeless love for Shelby Maddox and jealousy of Miss Walcott, her disappearance this morning indicates that she is in mortal fear of an attack inspired by the plotter.”