A silence fell in the room. O’Leary walked to the window, pulled the heavy, mulberry-coloured drapes aside, and stood there for a moment. The world outside was sodden and cold; the dense green shrubbery strange and unfamiliar with its fallen leaves rotting and its heavy branches dripping. The piano in the alcove opposite me was shrouded with a great black velvet cover, but it seemed to me that ghostly fingers took up the first haunting strains of the C Sharp Minor Prelude. I stirred impatiently and O’Leary turned to face Corole, who sat sullenly still in the davenport, her fingernails digging into an orange pillow.
“Come, Miss Letheny. Give up the radium and tell me the whole truth.”
“I have not got the radium. If you don’t believe me you can search the house.”
“The house has already been searched. Your maid was ordered not to tell you. It was done yesterday while you were—out.”
“While I was out yesterday—— Tell me, Mr. O’Leary, is anyone else honoured with a—guard? The man from the police department followed me all day yesterday and I suppose is out there now, sitting on the porch railing or somewhere.”
“O’Brien, his name is,” said O’Leary amiably. “No, you are not the only person thus watched.”
“I thought not.” Her eyes glinted with malicious satisfaction. “I thought not. What about Jim Gainsay? And Maida Day?”
“Well, what about them?”
“What about them!” To do Corole justice she did hesitate for the barest fraction of a second before she went on: “Is it possible that you do not know that Maida Day was the last person to talk to Louis?”
There was a pause, during which Corole looked in vain for any change of expression in O’Leary’s face.