But this morning the two girls and Haviland were called to a confab by Hardy, the detective.
“They’ve arrested the Count,” Hardy began, and Anita screamed an interruption:
“Arrested Count Charlier! Put him in jail?”
“Yes,” returned the detective. “I found the other one of that pair of gloves, the mate to the one in the lady’s hands,—where, do you suppose?”
“Where?”
“Rolled up in a pair of socks, in the Count’s chiffonnier drawer; of course, to hide it, as it is not at all easy to destroy a thing like that while visiting.”
“I know it,” said Pauline, earnestly; “it is hard. I’ve often noticed that, when I’ve wanted to burn a letter or anything. You can’t do it, unknown to the servants or somebody.”
“Rubbish!” said Anita, “It would have been easy for the Count to dispose of a glove if he had wanted to. But he didn’t. He never committed that crime! If a glove was found, as you say, somebody else put it there to incriminate an innocent man. It’s too absurd to fasten the thing on Count Charlier! Do you suppose he went to the boudoir and gave Miss Carrington poison, and then shook hands good-evening, and left his glove in her grasp? Nonsense! The glove in her dead hand was put there by the criminal to implicate the Count, and the glove in the rolled-up socks for the same purpose and by the same person!”
“By Jove, Miss Frayne! You may be right!” cried Hardy. “Somehow I can’t see the Count’s hand in this thing, and yet——”
“And yet, he did it!” put in Haviland. “Have they really jailed him? I’m glad.”