“Don’t phone me here,” the detective warned. “Don’t do anything by telephone. We’re on the trail of a man or men who can tap wires. He or they may have a confederate in this house. Be careful—get your suspect and bring him here. We’ll try him with the footprints. We’ll check up with the fingerprints. Then, if he don’t cave in, we’ll turn him over to Fosdick and the Third Degree. I firmly believe that Albert, whom I saw in the library and who was in this house in the early afternoon of this day, is implicated in the murder. Strange that I never suspected him.”
“I’m going!” growled Delaney, tearing his eyes away from Loris and glancing through the curtains. “I’m right after him, Chief. I won’t stop till I get him, either.”
“If you don’t make it in thirty minutes,” said Drew glancing sharply at his watch, “if you don’t make it by then—come back here. Perhaps something will have turned up in the meantime. Get that?”
“Sure, Chief! Good-by!”
Delaney had passed through the portières, crossed the reception room and pressed aside the tapestries leading to the hallways, before Drew stepped to the broad doorway and motioned for Loris and Nichols to take their former positions. He waited until they were seated with their faces in the shadow cast by the overhead silken hangings. He spoke then, and to the point.
“This case,” he said, thrusting his hands in his coat pockets and striding back and forth. “This case is clearing clue by clue. The trouble-man, whom some one let into the house this afternoon, is the missing link in the chain of circumstance and applied deduction. Who let him in?”
“I did!”
Drew stopped in his stride. “You, Nichols?” he questioned sharply. “Why did you let him in?”
“Because I asked Harry to,” defended Loris with heat. “I heard the bell ring. I sent the maid downstairs. She came back and told me that a man from the telephone company was waiting to look over the connections. She said that he said that there was trouble with the wires.”
“I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Drew; “that is,” he added hastily, “I don’t believe there was anything the matter at all. In the light of what Delaney has told me, that fellow came here last night, when some one else named Frosby or Frisby was sent. Now why would he want to take another’s place? For one reason only—the same reason that he came here this afternoon. This reason concerns your future health and security. We had one death in this house which followed his first visit. We don’t want anything to happen after his second visit.”