“My scouts are out,” Belknap said with suave contempt. “The report comes that he never has returned to town. So far, so good. I think if you would dwell a moment on this phase of the case you would find the house bore me out in saying Dorn left here last night in a strange state of perturbation. He looked like a man about to lose sane control of himself.”
“I think you make a good point, Belknap,” Berry spoke. “In many ways the whole campaign has the earmarks of the inspired scheme of a maniac, conceived and executed with that type of brilliance. We must at least leave no stone unturned in the hunt for Dorn. That’s enough of you for the present, Miss Mdevani. Now let’s have a crack at Miss Lacey, Sergeant. In a moment—time out for drinks.”
It was a terrified and incoherent Joel that faced her three interlocutors—more terrified than seemed quite called for under the circumstances, bad as the circumstances were. Horror was to be expected, and fear of a sort perhaps, but not stark terror. But Joel was the victim of a terror that alternated moments of intense shivering with a rigid paralysis of movement. She bravely tried to control herself, and sat sipping the brandy Belknap had poured for her and smiling mechanically. Berry was extremely kind.
“Will you tell us, Miss Lacey, as clearly and consecutively as possible, the story of your night last night? There is no slightest wish on our part to hurry or confuse you. We need your help in settling an affair that has been tragic and is likely to be more so unless we do something about it. Will you describe to us the way you spent your time between 10:30 last night, when I understand you retired, until 4:30 this morning when Colonel Blake’s murder was discovered?”
Joel, in broken snatches, told them of how she had gone to her room in a perturbed state of mind—puzzled by her uncle, bewildered at the startling rapidity with which a dangerous situation had fallen out of the blue, and inwardly shaken by a tale of murder that had struck home to one of their own number.
“Did the fact that your uncle read a passage of this Diary relative to a crime actually committed by Mr. Crawford mean that he might equally well have touched on crimes of others present? Or do you think he was choosing this way to cruelly pay off a score against Crawford?”
Joel drew a deep breath and looked quickly at Belknap.
“I think it must have been a personal question between my uncle and Mr. Crawford,” she said firmly.
Belknap appeared deaf to question and answer. Joel shuddered a little and dropped her eyes.
“Thank you, Miss Lacey. There seems to be mutual agreement on that point. You went to your room, you say. What next?”