“You are wasting your time with Swagara, I’m sure,” put in Bentham. “I’ll answer for him.”
“It is from apparently unlikely sources that valuable information often is obtained,” answered Nick Carter quietly. “Oh, and by the way, Chick.”
He walked over to the door, where Chick already had his hand on the knob, and spoke quietly to him for a few moments. Then Chick nodded comprehendingly and went out.
“While Chick is talking to Swagara, will you have the cook and Mary up here? I should like to question them in the presence of each other. No,” continued Nick, with a smile, as he saw a peculiar expression in Matthew Bentham’s face, “it isn’t that I want them to contradict each other, and so prove that they are not telling the truth. In their nervousness they are likely to tell different stories. My object is to get at the exact truth by letting one remind the other of details she may have forgotten. I believe both those young women are honest.”
The cook was a woman of thirty-five or so, while Mary was ten years younger. When they came into the library, Nick Carter politely gave them chairs side by side. Then he took a seat at the table and looked them over judicially.
“I am sorry to say,” he opened, “that Mr. Bentham has lost something of value, and he has permitted me to ask you a few questions. Of course, not a shadow of suspicion attaches to anybody in the house, but we have asked everybody to help. Miss Bentham and Mrs. Morrison have just told me all they know—which is nothing at all. It may be the same with you, but you won’t mind my asking you a few things, I am sure.”
This diplomatic way of putting it disarmed the two young women at once. The cook, in particular, would have fiercely resented the slightest intimation that she could touch anything which was not her own, and Mary would not have been far behind.
“We shall be glad to tell anything that will help,” replied the cook, who answered to the name of Maggie, and whose surname was Quinn. “But I do not think either me or Mary can be of much help. What was it you were wanting to know, sir?”
“Will you both cast your minds back to last night? Begin at ten o’clock, after Mr. Bentham, Miss Clarice, and Mrs. Morrison had gone out, and think carefully. Did[Pg 21] anything whatsoever happen which was at all out of the ordinary? Remember that what may seem of no moment to you may be of importance to us. Please go over every moment.”
“I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary,” replied the cook. “I went around, with Mary, to see that all the doors and windows were fastened. Then we went to bed.”