“No, ma’am, I never have. Well, Sir Herbert, then,—did he live here?”
“In this building,—not in this apartment,” Richard answered, as the two haughty ladies seemed disinclined to accommodate their inquisitor.
And then, by dint of slow and persistent questioning, Detective Corson drew out the vital statistics of the deceased gentleman and of the members of the Prall household.
“Now as to the ‘women,’” Corson went on. “You know Sir Herbert left a paper stating that women killed him. This is a most peculiar message for a dying man to leave.”
“Why so, if it is true?” and Letitia Prall’s eyes gave him a curious look.
“Yes,—that’s just it,—if it is true.”
“It’s got to be true,” burst out Bates, impulsively. “No man is going to write a thing like that with his last ounce of dying strength unless it’s true!”
“I agree to that,” and Corson nodded, “if he did write it.”
“What?” Miss Prall started up in amazement. “Who says he didn’t write it?”
“Nobody says so, I only say it might be so. Suppose the murderer himself wrote it to turn suspicion toward some one else,—some woman.”