Silence followed.
“What do you say to that?” he demanded.
But Serena had nothing to say, and neither had her handmaidens.
Then he turned a menacing frown upon them, as they sat motionless with lowered eyes.
“Well!”
They jumped slightly, and their eyes showed white around the iris. Suddenly they began to speak, almost in unison.
“We swear tuh Gawd, we done been hyuh wid she t’ree day.”
“Oh, Hell!” said the exasperated detective. “What’s the use? You might as well argue with a parrot-cage.”
“That woman is just as ill at this moment as you are,” he said to his unenthusiastic associate when they were again in the sunlight. “Her little burlesque show proves that, if nothing else. But there is her case all prepared. I don’t believe she killed Crown; she doesn’t look like that kind. She is either just playing safe, or she has something entirely different on her chest. But there’s her story; and you’ll never break in without witnesses of your own; and you’ll never get ’em.”
The Coroner was not a highly sensitized individual; but as he moved across the empty court, he found it difficult to control his nerves under the scrutiny which he felt leveled upon him from behind a hundred shuttered windows. Twice he caught himself looking covertly over his shoulders; and, as he went, he bore hopefully away toward the entrance.