“It happened every night—Friday was the last night,” said Eline impressively, “the lady in the car, the Chinaman and everything. But on Sunday night two Chinamen came and one went into the garden and was there for a long time. I knew the other one was a Chinaman because he walked so curiously. But they didn’t come on bicycles. They had a car which stopped at the far end of the street.”
“Remarkable!” said Mr. Stott, and stroked his smooth face.
Eline had finished her story but was reluctant to surrender her position as news gleaner.
“The police have been taking things away from the house all day,” reported the observer, “boxes and trunks. The girl at Pine Lodge told me that they are leaving there tonight. They’ve been keeping guard on the house ever since the murder.”
“Very, very extraordinary; very remarkable,” said Mr. Stott. “But I don’t think that it is any business of ours. No. Thank you, Eline. I should certainly have that tooth out. You mustn’t be a baby and American dentistry has reached such a high level of efficiency that—”
Eline listened respectfully but nervously and went up to her room to plug the aching molar with Dr. Billbery’s Kure-Ake.
It seemed to Mr. Stott that his head had scarcely touched the pillow before there came a knock upon the panel of his bedroom door.
“Yes?” he asked fiercely in case it was a burglar, who was in this polite manner seeking admission to his chamber.
“It is Eline, sir—they’re there!”
Mr. Stott shivered and, conquering an almost irresistible desire to pull the bedclothes over his head and pretend that he had been talking in his sleep, he got reluctantly out of bed and pulled on his dressing-gown. As to Mrs. Stott, she never moved. She went to bed, as she had often said, to sleep.