“No, sir; I have not.”
“That’s all, Bagley; thank you.”
“I see the point, Nick,” Fallon remarked, as they entered the grounds fronting the rectory.
“Holy smoke!” Bagley muttered, starting after them. “That must be Nick Carter. Great guns! there’ll be nothing to the case, if he is on it.”
The two detectives were admitted to the hall by a pale young woman in a calico wrapper and a long gingham apron. Her tear-filled eyes, together with the low moans and sobs of a corpulent woman in an adjoining room, evinced the grief and distress of both.
“Let me take the ribbons, Fallon,” Nick said quietly. “We may go over the traces if we drive too fast.”
Fallon readily acquiesced, and Nick paused and questioned the woman who had admitted them.
He learned that her name was Margaret Dawson; that she was the nearest neighbor to the rectory, and that she had hurried to assist Mrs. Kane, the housekeeper, upon learning her cries when she discovered the terrible crime.
“Nora was nearly out of her bed, sir, and didn’t know what to do,” she explained. “So I telephoned to the police station, sir, and was told to let things alone till the officers came. That was not long, sir, and nothing has been touched, not even Father Cleary’s body. An officer is in the library, sir, where it’s lying.”
“Mrs. Kane is the only servant?” questioned Nick, glancing at the sobbing woman in the adjoining room.