But the only answer that we got was a dumb and itchy “Heh?” So we gave it up. For you can’t squeeze water out of a sponge when the sponge is petrified.
“Say, Mrs. Doane,” says Poppy, during breakfast, “do you have a key to the desk in the room where we slept last night?”
“What! Me have a key to the desk where Corbin Danver kept his private papers? Laws-a-me, no! Why do you ask that?” Then, in sudden stiff suspicion: “Have you boys been snooping in that desk?”
“No,” says Poppy truthfully. Then he asked further. “Who has the key?—Lawyer Chew?”
“Outside of what keys you see here in the doors, the rest, from all over the house, were sent to Miss Ruth by registered mail.”
“Who mailed the keys to her?—Lawyer Chew?”
“No, Dr. Madden.”
“Maybe he kept out one or two.”
“I can’t say that he didn’t, but I don’t believe it. For he was too loyal a friend of my dead relative’s to fail, in the smallest way, to carry out the dying man’s final wishes.”
“Then you think Miss Ruth has the desk key?”