Presently Duvall got up, and, calling Mr. Stapleton to one side, asked him, in a low tone, to detain the nurse in the library for a few moments. He wished to search her room.
"But it has already been thoroughly searched by the police."
"I know. But I must search it again. It will require but a few moments."
Stapleton nodded. "I will wait for you here, Mr. Duvall," he said. "Mary, you will wait, as well."
The nurse's room was on the third floor, in a rear building. Duvall found it, after some slight difficulty, with the assistance of one of the other servants.
He seemed, on entering the room, to have but one object in view. He went at once to the mantel, and, taking from it the two small bottle-shaped vases which stood upon it, shook them both vigorously. A faint rattling sound came from the second. He turned it upside down upon the palm of his hand, and there tumbled out a quantity of ashes, and the butts of several partly smoked cigarettes. With a quiet smile he replaced them in the vase, and returned to the library.
"Mary, you may go now," he said.
When the woman had gone, he turned to Mr. Stapleton. "It was Mary Lanahan herself who smoked the cigarette which I found in the grass," he said.
"Well, what of it?" The matter seemed to the banker to be utterly without significance.
"She had, no doubt, stolen them from Mrs. Stapleton."