"It had been there all night, Mr. Vining," Beatrice purred on. "So had she!"
"Mary—my Mary? Mary Dalton?" Robert gasped.
"Mary Dalton!"
"But that—that's all damned—pardon me!—nonsense! That——"
He turned on Anthony; and then, quickly as he had turned, he gasped and stared with burning eyes.
View him as one chose, there was nothing about Anthony to indicate that it was nonsense. He was biting his lips; his eyes were upon the floor; had he rehearsed the thing for months he could not possibly have looked more guilty.
"Why—why——" choked Robert Vining.
Beatrice laid a slender hand on his arm.
"Come with me," she said quickly. "Come and see her bag and her little toilet case and several other of her things. Perhaps you'll recognize them, too, and they'll convince you that she really settled down here for a visit. Come!"
As a man in a dreadful dream, Robert Vining followed her blindly into the corridor and out of sight. Johnson Boller smiled a demon smile and thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets.