The sight nearly dazzled Prescott, for Miss Lindsay was at her best that night.
She was a little thing, with soft dark hair, bundled about her ears, soft, dark eyes, that were now challenging Prescott sternly, and a slim, dainty little figure, robed in sequin-dripping gauze, from which her soft neck and shoulders rose like a flower from its sheath.
“Who are you?” she asked, not rudely, but with her eyes wide in dismay. “What are you doing to my brother?”
“Miss Lindsay?” and Prescott bowed politely. “I bring distressing news. Your uncle—that is, Mr Robert Gleason, is—has—well, perhaps frankness is best—he is dead.”
“Robert Gleason!” Phyllis turned as pale as her brother, but preserved her calm. “Tell me—tell me all about it.”
She, too, placed her little hand on a chair, as if the grip of something solid helped, and turned her anxious eyes to Prescott.
“I thought better to tell you young people,” he began, “and let you tell your mother—Mr Gleason’s sister.”
“Yes; I will tell her,” said Phyllis, with dignity. “Go on, Mr——”
“Prescott,” he supplied. “The facts in brief are these. Mr Gleason called up Doctor Davenport on the telephone, and asked the doctor to come to him, as he was—well, hurt. When the doctor reached there, Mr Gleason was dead.”
“What killed him?” Phyllis spoke very quietly, and looked Prescott straight in the face. Yet the alert eyes of the detective saw her fingers clench more tightly on the chair, and noticed her red lips lose a little color as they set themselves in a firm line.