“Who gave Hughes that poison that not one in a thousand has ever heard of, and how was the Goddard kid snatched from off the face of the earth?” McCarty retorted but in a cautiously lowered tone. He had approached the bench once more and was gazing down at the still figure. “You remember what Ching Lee said? Lucette was the ‘next.’ He don’t think this devilment is goin’ to stop even here and no more do I, unless our luck turns and we can stamp it out! This girl, now—”
He paused, staring down seemingly at the small feet encased in their neat shoes which peeped out from beneath a fold of her skirt, and Dennis drew back with a shiver.
“It turns me fair sick to look at her! To think we was only talking to her this morning!—It seems to me there is a kind of a funny smell on the air! Don’t you get it, Mac? Maybe it’s something that creeps over you gradual, and before we know it we could be corpses ourselves! I’d like well to be out of this room!”
“’Tis your imagination and not that nose you brag of that’s working now!” McCarty thrust his foot forward in a pushing motion until his knee struck smartly against the edge of the stone seat on which Lucette’s body lay. “There’s no smell whatever, barring the scent of the flowers! Himself has been here through it all, remember.”
He indicated with a jerk of his head the seat where the bowed figure rested, and at that moment the inspector reëntered the conservatory.
“Mr. Orbit, is there any other entrance to this room besides that door?”
Orbit looked up and then rose slowly, shaking his head.
“None, but the windows are open as you see—”
“We’ll close and fasten them and then lock this door behind us. I want everything in here left undisturbed until the medical examiner comes. Take us somewhere private where we can talk; I’ll have to get every detail connected with this straight for my report.”
“My study, upstairs?” Orbit suggested.