“Then they could have slipped out again. They may have been hidden there night after night, waiting for just the chance that came last night.”
“But, suppose Moore had been downstairs when Sir Herbert entered—”
“Just the same,” Gibbs explained, wearily. “Then they would have gone away and tried again the next night. A woman’s perseverance and patience is beyond all words!”
“It’s all beyond all words,” and Richard folded his arms despondently. “I can’t get a line on it.”
“Well, I can,” asserted Gibbs; “they came, no doubt, prepared. Else, where’d they get the knife? Now, naturally one criminal would be assumed,—that’s why women was written so clearly. Several who know, have agreed the handwriting is positively that of Sir Herbert Binney,—so, there’s nothing left to do but cherchez les femmes.”
CHAPTER VIII
Julie Baxter
Richard Bates and the two detectives stood waiting for the already summoned elevator to take them downstairs.
“You see,” Gibbs was saying, “in nearly every investigation there’s somebody who won’t tell where he was at the time of the crime.”