“Yes, he did.”
“And that was when you gave him the bottle of Pemberton’s Drops?”
“Yes, what of it?”
“Nothing. Let us get on to White Towers, and have a word with Nora Lepley.”
But on our way I called at the post office and had a long conversation on the telephone with Detective Pepster.
CHAPTER XXV
THE STORY OF MARY GRAINGER
At White Towers we found the family party assembled, apparently awaiting our coming, though old Lady Clevedon, grim, forbidding and unbelieving, flung up her hands as I approached.
“And what may you be doing here, Mr. Detective?” she said. “This is a family council, and strangers—besides, what have you to do with this? It is the other mystery you are engaged on, and you might as well not have been, for all the good it has done.”
“It is all right,” Billy Clevedon interposed, a little brusquely. “Holt is here at my suggestion.”
“If we might all sit down—” I began.