“No,” said Wise. “Do try, Mr Granniss, to tell me everything. I was called to this case altogether too late. Much could have been done had I been here sooner. But, now tell me every little thing you can think of.”
So Granniss told them of the finding of the yellow satin sofa-pillow in the middle of the kitchen floor. He obtained the pillow from the hall and showed it to them.
Zizi scrutinized it with her eager black eyes, and carefully extracted from its embroidered design a small fine hairpin.
“An invisible,” she said, holding it up to the light. “Betty’s,—I daresay?”
“Yes,” and Granniss looked at it. “She wore dinky little ones like that in her front hair. All girls do, I guess.”
“It may mean something or nothing,” Wise said, musingly. “If Miss Varian was in the habit of lying on the hall sofa, the hairpin may have been caught in the cushion some time ago.”
“I don’t know,” Granniss said; “I never was here while—when Betty was here.”
“Well, aside from the hairpin, what about the yellow pillow, on the kitchen floor, Penny?” Zizi asked, looking up into the detective’s face as at an oracle.
“It’s a clue, all right,” Wise said; “oh, if I’d only been here that very day! A most astounding case, and every possible evidence wiped out!”
“Oh, no, not that,” Zizi spoke cheerfully. “And now, as you say, you must get busy in the matter of poor Martha. What about the green streak?” “Yes,” the detective spoke to Rodney. “There was a dull green smear across the palm of that girl’s left hand. I see no freshly painted furniture in this room.”