“What’s it that this Otto had a few words with him?” he demanded as they reached the west gate on the Avenue. “Ching Lee went further than that with a knife! Because Truda is working now in a house where a child died of the lockjaw, and Calabar bean is one of the cures they try for it, you’ve got it all fixed that Otto laid hold of some of it there, or Truda gave it to him, and he must needs have gone over the way and sprinkled enough of it on Hughes’ dinner, unbeknownst to any one, to kill him! ’Tis well you took to fire-fighting, Denny, instead of following me on the Force!”
“Is it so!” Dennis retorted. “I’m still on my job, let me remind you, though maybe ’tis well you resigned when you did, if you can’t see further than the end of your own nose, that you couldn’t even smell with last night! Who else on the block has been within a mile of a case of lockjaw, and for what else would that powdered bean be left lying around? Swede or Chink, a man’s a man, though you might pick up a knife or a blackthorn, whichever was handiest, to go for a bully you saw abusing a kid it would be in hot rage; ’twould take something bigger than that to make you sit down, cool and calm, and figure out how to poison him! But a jealous husband might, and didn’t Otto threaten to ‘fix’ Hughes, by the words out of Snape’s mouth? That Truda don’t suspicion a thing, but then she’d not know it if a powder factory took fire next door! ’Tis a crime of nature that such a grand-looking woman should be so dumb!”
“We’ve another kind of a crime on our hands, I’d remind you,” McCarty observed. “Where on earth is that Bill Jennings?”
He rang once more and Dennis pointed through the grill-work of the fence.
“There he is, clear at the other end of the block, letting another guy out of the east gate. They’ve walled themselves in fine, the folks that live here, but they could not shut out age, nor sickness, nor murder! Good-afternoon, sir!”
Immaculate in frock coat and tall silk hat, the elder of the two Sloanes, whom they had encountered on the previous evening, had swung briskly down the Avenue to their side. He appeared, for the moment, oblivious to Dennis’ salutation, as he fumbled with his gold pince-nez and stared down the vista of the enclosed street.
“Confound it! What’s the fellow mean—?” Then he drew himself up and turned to the couple near. “Oh, you’re the men from Headquarters! Still on that affair of Orbit’s valet?—I’ve forgotten my key again; such a bore!”
“There, the watchman’s seen us; he’s coming on the run.” McCarty nudged his companion and then added to Gardner Sloane: “We’ve been talking to the other servants on the block, but we haven’t been to your house yet since you said only your butler and the trained nurse would be likely to have known Hughes.”
“Unless I’m mistaken that was Lindholm the nurse going out the other gate just now!” Sloane fumed. “Wretched impudence, his leaving my father like this without permission. It always gives him a bad turn to be left alone. But what’s all this to do about the valet’s death? Nothing actually suspicious about it, was there? Silly rot, having an investigation of this sort in the Mall!”
Bill Jennings pounded heavily up and admitted them at this juncture, preventing the necessity of a reply from McCarty, who was carefully avoiding Dennis’ stare of dismayed inquiry.