“No. Not yet. But wait till the Smiths come, and see whether Horace Ditmar tries to chum up with them. You know Adelaide Ditmar admitted that they went over to call on Mrs. Hunter after their fire and the woman almost snubbed her.”
“True.... Who’s your other suspect, Mary Lou? Is it—Cliff?”
“No. Positively not Cliff! In spite of that pack of cards they found over there last night. Imagine Cliff Hunter setting fire to a house that had three children asleep in it! It’s unthinkable.”
Jane breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said.
“The other person I suspect strongly is Rebecca Adams,” continued the young detective. “I hate to, for she seems harmless, but you just never can tell about a half-witted person like that. She wanders around at such queer times, and then her coming here last night, after predicting a fire in the afternoon, looks bad. She’s got to be watched.”
“Right again,” agreed the other girl admiringly. “But go on, ‘Spencer Dean’! Who’s your third suspect—the one you called a possible chance?”
“The hotelkeeper, Frazier. It’s meant a lot to his business. He has the motive all right, but I just can’t see how he could have actually accomplished setting the places on fire. He was with us all evening the night Flicks’ burned down, and Cliff says he was at the hotel when the Hunters’ cottage burned. Still, Frazier’s sly. He might have managed it.”
“I’ll have to take a good look at him tonight when we go over to dinner,” observed Jane, “and try to size up his character.”
Mary Louise reached for her beach robe and stepped into her slippers.
“Come on, Jane,” she said. “We’ve got to hurry, or the crowd will go home before we get there.”