Then he laughed, and said, “You’ve been reading detective stories, miss. And you remember how they always say ‘Churches lay femmy!’ Well, go ahead and church, if you like. But be prepared for a sad and sorrowful result.”
The man was obviously deeply moved, and his big, homely face worked with emotion.
But as he would tell us nothing further, and as Norah and I had finished our rather unproductive search of the rooms, we went back to my office.
Here Norah showed me what she had taken from the waste basket.
“I’ll give it back to him, if you say so,” she offered; “but he could do nothing with it, and maybe I can.”
It was only a tiny scrap of pinkish paper, thin and greatly crumpled. I took it.
“Be careful,” warned Norah; “I don’t suppose it could show finger prints, but anyway, it’s a sort of a kind of a clew.”
“But what is it?” I asked, blankly, as I held the crumpled paper gingerly in thumb and forefinger.
“It’s a powder-paper,” vouchsafed Norah, briefly.
“A what?”