She came back from across the room, and sank down in her chair again. She did not speak—the question, that meant life and death to them both, was in her eyes.
Jimmie answered the mute interrogation tersely.
“Not yet!” he said. Then, almost curtly, in a quick, incisive way, as the keen, alert brain began to delve and probe: “You say this man Clarke never returned to the house after that night?”
She nodded her head quietly.
“You are sure of that?” he insisted.
“Yes,” she said. “I am sure.”
“And you say that all these years you have kept a watch on the man who is posing as your uncle, and that he never went anywhere, or associated with any one, that would afford you a clew to this Crime Club?”
“Yes,” she said again.
It was a moment before Jimmie Dale spoke.
“It's very strange!” he said musingly, at last. “So strange, in fact, that it's impossible. He must have communicated with the others, and communicated with them often. The game they were playing was too big, too full of details, to admit of any other possibility. And the telephone as an explanation isn't good enough.”