“In the dining room, locked in with the others,” reported Billings coolly. “As soon as he came snooping up, I shoved him in with Louden Powers and Lampton, and let them have it out between them. Then I came out, to see who it was coming up the road in an automobile. It was you. The other guy came only just a little while ago.”
“You mean the man you have in the dining room?”
“Yes. He said he walked up from the station, talking to another fellow who was with him, when suddenly he missed him.”
“Who?”
“The other guy he was talking to.”
“Do you mean to say that he allowed a man to get away from him while they were actually talking, and didn’t see where he’d gone?”
“That’s what he told us.”
“I don’t believe it, for one,” put in Chick.
“Unless this mug in the dining room is daffy. Then it might have happened,” suggested Patsy. “Who is he, anyhow?”
Nick did not stop to answer, although he could have done it. He went over to Bessie Silvius, and asked her to wait in the drawing-room with her father, for a little time, while he straightened out a little misunderstanding that had occurred.