And then, the whole matter was laid before the intelligence of Pennington Wise, and with a rapt look of interest and a few pointed questions here and there, the detective listened to the history of his new case.
At last, the account having been brought up to date, Wise nodded his head, and sat silent for a moment. It was not the melodramatic silence of one affecting superiority, but the more impressive quietude of a mind really in deep thought.
Then Wise said, simply, “I’ve heard nothing yet to make me assume any supernatural agency. ’Ve you, Zizi?”
“No,” came a soft, thin voice from the shadowy depths of the rear hall.
Milly jumped. “Has she been there all the time?” she said.
“She’s always there,” returned Wise, in a matter-of-fact way. “Now I’m ready to declare that the deaths of your two friends are positively not due to spiritistic wills, but are dastardly murders, cleverly accomplished by human hands and human brains.”
“How?” gasped Eve Carnforth. She was leaning forward, her beryl eyes dilated and staring, her hands clenched, her slender form trembling with excitement.
“That I do not know yet,—do you, Zizi?”
“No,” came tranquilly from the distance.
“Let that girl come here,” cried Milly, pettishly. “It gets on my nerves to have her speaking from way back there!”