“What is it?” she queried. “Is anything the matter?”
“Yes, come and see what I’ve found.”
We hurried back to the rose garden.
“Oh, the poor dears, the poor dears! Oh, how horrible!” she cried when I pointed to the birds, her sweet low voice vibrating with a tenderness that it made my heart ache to hear.
“Yes, it’s the poison,” she agreed, when I showed her Ethel’s cat. “How horribly, oh, how wantonly cruel! Run in quickly, please, and telephone to Inspector Brown before the others get down-stairs. Ask him to come in by the side door and straight to me here at once, not to go to the house. I know he’s at the station. If Annie’s about send her to me here out of the way before you speak. If any of the others are about come back to me at once and we must hide them away without showing the inspector. The number’s forty-seven. I’ll be thinking of some excuse for wanting Annie.”
There was no one about but Annie and when I had sent her to Janet I got my message through to the inspector without any interruption, for once the telephone working according to plan. He promised to be with us in a few minutes and I hurried back to find Janet walking up and down the path behind the garage. What excuse she made for her talk with Annie I forgot to ask, but it was satisfactory, for Annie met me smiling broadly.
Janet was angry. Now that I know her so well I can better estimate how angry and disturbed she was. “It’s so stupidly cruel,” she almost sobbed, “to put it there where the birds come to drink. It seems an unsympathetic thing to say, but somehow it riles me more than the murder itself.”
“Don’t you think we had better tell the doctor,” I asked her, “he will be able to say more definitely if it’s the poison—the Chinese poison, I mean.”
She shook her head emphatically and looked at me rather queerly, I almost fancied, too. “No, no,” she said. “There’s nothing to be gained by telling any one else. Never tell any one anything, that’s Johnny Allport’s golden rule for detective work.”
At her suggestion we went back to the rose garden to await the inspector and to prevent any more birds from drinking the poisoned water. “He’ll have to take them away with him,” she said. “Did you tell him anything?”