“Did Mrs. Nash recognize the man?” he asked.
Roberts shook his head. “She said she was unable to make out if it was a man or a woman—”
“A woman!” Alan dropped the penknife with which he was fiddling and half rose. “A woman? Why, that’s a man’s beard in your hand, Guy.”
“But a woman could have disguised herself with it, as well as a man,” Trenholm said. “Odd, isn’t it, that something always happens to Miss Ward’s patients when she is on duty.”
“For God’s sake, why are you forever picking on her!” Alan dropped back in his chair and his voice rang out indignantly, reaching the ears of Betty Carter, who was eating a belated breakfast in the dining room.
Betty’s violent start was not lost on Martha, and the housekeeper decided to remain in the room under pretext of rearranging the silver in the drawer. But first she handed a plate of toast to Betty and as the girl took a slice she encountered the unfriendly stare of Martha’s oddly assorted eyes and an involuntary shiver ran down her spine. Her attention distracted, Betty failed to distinguish any reply to Alan’s fervid question and, not having heard Trenholm’s remark which had called it forth, she was in doubt to whom the “her” referred. Who was Guy Trenholm “picking on” now? She longed to steal to the closed portières and overhear what was being said, but Martha’s presence kept her in her seat.
The opiate had given her needed sleep and Betty felt more like her old self once again. Against the advice of Somers, Mrs. Nash’s maid, who had gone early to inquire how she was, she had insisted upon getting up and coming downstairs. Somers had regaled her, while in the process of assisting her to dress, with a dramatic account of Mrs. Nash’s adventures that night—and they lost nothing in the telling. Betty’s rapt attention would have inspired an even less imaginative person to thrilling heights of fancy. A burst of tears relieved the tension of Betty’s overtaxed nervous system and reduced Somers to contrite silence. Had not Doctor Roberts as well as Miss Ward cautioned her not to excite Miss Betty? Somers’ confused state of mind was not lessened by Betty’s reception of a piece of news which the maid let drop incautiously—the expected arrival of Daniel Corcoran, for many years attorney and close friend of the elder Abbott and the legal adviser of the latter’s son. Betty’s feverish desire to dress and have her breakfast downstairs took away Somers’ breath and she retired thankfully, a short time later, to the comparative tranquillity of Mrs. Nash’s bedroom.
Unaware of Betty’s presence in the dining room Roberts and Trenholm continued their low-voiced conversation.
“Have you made tests for fingerprints on the nut pick, Trenholm?“ inquired Roberts.
The sheriff nodded. “An expert came down from Washington,” he answered. “Aside from the bloodstains, there were no marks upon it. Evidently the person using it”—Trenholm held up the nut pick in its wrapping of oil silk as he spoke and then placed it carefully in the inside pocket of his coat—“wore gloves. As a means of identification the bit of steel is a failure.”