A trim maid admitted them and showed them into a room hung with beautiful tapestry and excellently selected paintings. In a few moments there came a light hasty step and Nora stood framed in the doorway. She wore a sort of soft, gauzy robe-like thing which clung to her magnificently strong, yet completely youthful figure, causing her more than ever to resemble a young Juno. The gleaming bronze hair was gathered in a great coil at the back of her head; her wonderfully modeled arms were bare; the right was clasped about with a heavy bracelet of what seemed raw, red gold.
"Bat!" she said, gladly, and then stopped short at sight of a stranger.
"This is Mr. Ashton-Kirk," said Scanlon, presenting his companion. "You've heard me speak of him, I think."
Nora Cavanaugh held out her hand with that frankness which is always so fascinating in a beautiful woman.
"I am very glad to see you," she said. "And I recall very well what I heard of you. It was that queer affair of the Campes, and the strange dangers which haunted the hills about their country place." Her eyes were fixed steadily upon Ashton-Kirk as she spoke; the smile of welcome was still in them; but behind this there was something else—a something which evidently interested Ashton-Kirk intensely.
"I've been telling Kirk of the thing at Stanwick," spoke Scanlon, as they all three sat down at a west window, through which the lowering sun was throwing its crimsoning touch. "He's a little interested and thought he'd like to hear what you had to say."
The smile went completely out of Nora's eyes; the sombre thing at the back of them came at once to the surface; and Ashton-Kirk saw her hand, as she lifted it to her face, tremble.
"The police are fools!" she declared. "Frank Burton is innocent. It is shameful to attribute any crime to him—but to accuse him of the murder of his father"—here a shudder ran through her—"it's horrible!"
"He'll have to carefully explain a number of things, though, before the authorities change their minds," said Scanlon. "Not only have they certain definite facts on him; but they have the notion that he's not told them everything."
"He is innocent," protested Nora.