“I unscrewed it—and, behold.”
Loosening the screws, which he had only partially readjusted, Wise lifted down the mirror, and disclosed a rectangular space where the wall paper had been cut away.
“The bakery men!” Zizi cried. “Why ‘women,’ then?”
“Now, look here, Ziz,” and Wise replaced the mirror, “get it in your head that women may have been interested in getting this recipe. To suppose a woman may have been acting for a man, while possible, is not probable.”
“Why not? Suppose a woman, say a working girl, so devoted to a man that she’d commit murder at his bidding——”
“No man could be such a coward as that!”
“Oh, Penny, what an exalted opinion you have of your sex! Of course he could! A man who would murder would use a woman to help him murder. Of course he offered a big inducement,—marriage maybe——”
“You’re romancing——”
“No, I’m not; I’m reconstructing. I see a man wanting that recipe desperately. He sets a woman to get it. He may not have meant her to go to such lengths as murder, to get it, but——”
“All right, but stick to facts. The recipe has been stolen by someone in the know. Some one who realized why Sir Herbert had his room repapered——”