"What?" Dalton, momentarily sidetracked, whirled upon her. "You've heard something from Mary, madam? You know——"
"I know all about Mary!" said Beatrice Boller.
"Madam!" Anthony broke in. "I forbid you to say one word of your ridiculous and unjustified——"
Beatrice simply ignored his presence and favored Theodore Dalton with her unspeakable smile.
"Mary Dalton passed the night in this apartment," she said quickly.
"Mary——" Dalton cried, just as Robert hurried to his side and clutched his arm.
"They say she was here!" he panted. "The woman says so, and Mary's hat—see! She's holding it even now! And Mary's bag is in a room there, and her comb and brush and two of her handkerchiefs and——"
"But it wasn't a woman, whatever she's left!" Hobart Hitchin contributed. "It was a boy, about twenty or twenty-two—a boy Fry introduced to me as David Prentiss, and who was Dalton's son. Look! We have his trousers, and Dalton has identified them as his son's!"
Dalton's attention was still upon Beatrice.
"You say that—that my daughter——"