“I agree with you,” Chick replied. “He appears heartbroken.”
“No wonder. This is my sister, Miss Vaughn, Mr. Carter.”
Chick had entered an attractively furnished library, where a handsome, dark girl, in the twenties, sat reading a book. She laid it aside at once and arose to acknowledge the introduction, though with manifest wonderment as to the visitor’s mission.
Gerald Vaughn hastened to inform her, however, evoking repeated expressions of surprise and sympathy, and Chick then said:
“I came here only to ask whether you have heard any disturbance outside this evening. We wish to find out, if possible, how the thieves entered Mr. Strickland’s apartments and got away with such a quantity of plunder without being seen or heard. It really is very mysterious.”
“Decidedly so, Mr. Carter,” Vaughn agreed. “But we have heard nothing unusual, not a sound suggestive of anything wrong.”
“We have been here alone, too, since dinner,” put in Clarissa, gazing with demure, dark eyes at the face of the detective. “Both of us have been reading, and it has seemed unusually quiet. If there had been any noise outside, Gerald, dear, we surely ought to have heard it.”
“It seems so, indeed, Clarissa.”
“I have not heard a sound that I can recall.”
“Nor have I, Mr. Carter, I assure you.”