"I am alone here in the city," she answered, simply. "I was afraid to intrude."
Throughout she gave the impression that she was strangely reticent about herself. Evidently Kennedy had not much faith that Grady would elicit anything of importance. He tiptoed to the door that led from the bedroom to the hall and found that it could be opened from the inside.
While Grady continued his questioning, Craig and I slipped out into the hall to the room which Mrs. Anthony occupied.
It was a suite much plainer than that occupied by Shirley. Craig switched on the light and looked about hastily and keenly.
For a moment he stood before a dressing-table on which were several toilet articles. A jewel-case seemed to attract his attention, and he opened it. Inside were some comparatively trifling trinkets. The thing that caused him to exclaim, however, was a necklace, broken and unstrung. I looked, too. It was composed of little crimson beads, each with a black spot on it!
Quickly he drew from his pocket the photograph he had taken from Shirley's baggage. As I looked at it again there could be no doubt now in my mind of the identity of the original. It was the same face. And about the neck, in the picture, was a necklace, plainly the same as that before us.
"What are the beads?" I asked, fingering them. "I've never seen anything like them."
"Not beads at all," he replied. "They are Hindu prayer-beans, sometimes called ruttee, jequirity beans, seeds of the plant known to science as Abrus precatorius. They produce a deadly poison—abrin." He slipped four or five of them into his pocket. Then he resumed his cursory search of the room. There, on a writing-pad, was a note which Mrs. Anthony had evidently been engaged in writing. Craig pored over it for some time, while I fidgeted. It was nothing but a queer jumble of letters:
SOWC FSSJWA EKNLFFBY WOVHLX IHWAJYKH 101MLEL EPJNVPSL WCLURL GHIHDA ELBA.
"Come," I cautioned; "she may return any moment."