"I am—if she is innocent."
"You'll have a task doing it. Everybody around here thinks her guilty."
To this Adam Adams did not reply. He was down on his hands and knees, close to where the head of the murdered woman had rested. He placed his nose to the carpet and drew in a long breath. His olfactory nerves were sensitive, and detected a certain pungent, stinging odor, of a sort not easily forgotten.
"You must be pretty short-sighted," was the woman's comment. The sight of the man on his hands and knees amused her.
"Well, I might have a better pair of eyes, I admit."
From his examination of the carpet, the detective turned to the window. Outside was the roof to the side piazza of the mansion. On the tin roof were some dried-up spots of mud. He looked them over carefully, and came to the conclusion that they were footprints, but how old was a question.
"When did it rain last around here?" he asked.
"We haven't had a real storm for ten days or two weeks. We have had several showers, though."
He took a glance into Mrs. Langmore's dressing room. Everything was in perfect order, even to the powder-box and the cologne bottles on the dresser.
"That is all I wish to see up here," he said, and passed below, where he encountered the policeman in charge. Like the woman, this officer had taken him to be a lawyer, and he readily consented to let the detective inspect the library.