"Do what you can," said Prince, "and you," he added to Deborah, "come down with me. I wish to ask you a few questions."
Deborah was no fool and saw that the Inspector was determined to make her do what he wanted. Besides, Sylvia was in the hands of the doctor, and Deborah felt that he could do more than she, to bring the poor girl to her senses. After a few parting injunctions she left the room and went downstairs with the Inspector. The police had made no further discovery.
Prince questioned not only the Gwynne Street policeman, who had given his report, but all others who had been in the vicinity. But they could tell him nothing. No one suspicious had been seen leaving Gwynne Street north or south, so, finding he could learn nothing in this direction, Prince turned his attention to the servant. "Now, then, what do you know?" he asked. "Don't say anything likely to incriminate yourself."
"Me!" shouted Deborah, bouncing up with a fiery face. "Don't you be taking away my character. Why, I know no more who have done it than a babe unborn, and that's stupid enough, I 'opes, Mr. Policeman. Ho! indeed, and we pays our taxes to be insulted by you, Mr. Policeman." She was very aggravating, and many a man would have lost his temper. But Inspector Prince was a quiet and self-controlled officer, and knew how to deal with this violent class of women. He simply waited till Deborah had exhausted herself, and then gently asked her a few questions. Finding he was reasonable, Deborah became reasonable on her part, and replied with great intelligence. In a few minutes the Inspector, by handling her deftly, learned all that had taken place on that terrible night, from the time Sylvia had started up in bed at the sound of that far-distant cry of a soul in agony. "And that, from what Miss Sylvia says," ended Deborah, "was just before the church clock struck the hour of twelve."
"You came down a quarter of an hour later?"
"I did, when Miss Sylvia woke me," said Deborah; "she was frightened out of her seven senses, and couldn't get up at once. Yes—it was about twenty minutes after the hour we come down to see—It," and the woman, strong nerved as she was, shuddered.
"Humph," said the Inspector, "the assassin had time to escape."
"Begging your pardon, sir, them, or him, or her, or it as murdered master was below in the cellar when we saw the corp—not that it was what you'd call a corp then."
"Will you say precisely what you mean?"
Deborah did so, and with such wealth of detail that even the hardened Inspector felt the creeps down his official back. There was something terribly merciless about this crime. The man had been bound like a sheep for the slaughter; his mouth had been sealed with the brooch so that he could not cry out, and then in the sight of his child and servant he had been slowly strangled by means of the copper wire which communicated with the cellar. One of the policemen brought up an auger which evidently had been used to bore the hole for the wire to pass through, for the fresh sawdust was still in its whorls. "Who does this belong to?" Prince asked Deborah.