Thorne eyed the Secret Service agent in surprise mixed with amusement, but before he could reply Mitchell addressed him briskly.
“Suppose you tell me, Dr. Thorne, why Bruce Brainard stopped to see you on Monday evening before coming here, and why you never spoke of his visit.”
“Brainard had an attack of vertigo on the way here, and, meeting Cato, asked to be directed to the nearest physician,” replied Thorne. “So Cato brought him to me.”
Millicent, who had listened to Noyes’ statements in dumb agony, looked up at Thorne. “Bruce told me that he had stopped to see you, and Tuesday morning when I discovered Bruce lying in bed with his throat cut and recognized the razor, I—I—rushed to the telephone to ask you to come over, but Vera came and frightened me away before I got you.”
Noyes struggled to sit up. Millicent’s statement had caught him off guard.
“You discovered Brainard’s murder on Tuesday morning?” he asked incredulously. “You went back to his bedroom again?”
Mitchell was the first to grasp the significance of Noyes’ remark.
“What’s this?” he demanded. “What do you mean to insinuate—that Miss Porter was in Bruce Brainard’s bedroom on Monday night?”
“She was,” responded a voice from the doorway, and Wyndham, spinning around, saw Dorothy Deane advancing into the room. She looked desperately ill and staggered rather than walked. “Millicent was seen in Bruce’s bedroom by her brother Craig,” Dorothy added.
Her listeners eyed her in astonishment too deep for expression. Wyndham was the first to recover himself. “Come with me, dear,” he said soothingly. “You are ill, delirious.”