“Or my mother! Yes, I do know it, but either supposition is so ridiculous——”
“Wait a minute; no matter how ridiculous a suspicion may seem to the people involved, it must be met and denied or it remains. Now, if suspicion in the two directions mentioned are so absurd, we must prove their absurdity.”
“How?”
“Either by making it clear that the suspected women could not have been guilty or, better still, finding the guilty party.”
“Let’s do that, then! I know my mother had no hand in it,—and I’m equally sure that Miss Prall didn’t——”
“But your surety and your certainty are of no evidential value.”
“That’s why I say let’s find the real women! You are a detective just as much as Mr Wise is one,—I’m an interested principal, just as much as Richard Bates is,—can’t we do something big?”
“Good! That’s the talk! We’ll try, at least. Let’s go to the Binney rooms now, and see what we can see.”
“Small chance of seeing anything in rooms that Mr Wise has already searched.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Set a woman to catch a woman! If women have sought and found that recipe, we’ll find their traces. If it’s still there, we must find the paper ourselves.”