She bowed her head in the affirmative. She felt too much emotion to trust herself to speak.
“Reginald,” continued Nick, “I have occupied the few moments while I waited for you to bring your mother and sister to this room in telephoning to New York, for I find that your valet, Rogers, has started for the city without your leave. Ladies, and you, Reginald, the valet whom you have known as Paul Rogers, is the murderer of Ramon Orizaba—at least, I am sufficiently satisfied of the correctness of that statement to have telephoned to police headquarters for his arrest. Presumably he will be met at the station when he arrives in the city, but if he is not, I think I shall have no difficulty in finding him later.”
“Rogers! My man, Rogers?” exclaimed Reginald.
“Yes. Had it ever occurred to you that Rogers was above his station?”
“Often. He was remarkably well educated for a man in such a position.”
“He occupied several positions; among them, he represented himself as an agent for an enemy of Orizaba’s. Rogers was evidently clever at disguises, for in his room, which I found time to visit for a moment, there was, in addition to a half-filled bottle of chloroform, a very good supply of wigs, pigments and other necessaries for manufacturing disguises. Do you remember when Rogers came to you this morning in the rose-garden and told you that Orizaba was dead?”
“Perfectly.”
“I noticed then that the soles of his boots were stained with clay—a kind of blue clay unlike anything I saw during our walk together from the station this morning—which you assured me was the route by which you returned to the house from the banquet.”
“It was the same.”
“Do you remember that I asked you if there had been a shower here in the afternoon of yesterday? I wished to know if the clay had been softened sufficiently to make those stains. In discovering the stains upon the boots of Rogers I paid no attention to them, more than to observe that they were there; but when I saw stains exactly like them on the boots of the murdered man I was interested. Also, the discovery of the burrs upon his clothing, to which I called your attention, brought to mind the fact that I had seen, also without heeding them at the time, marks of the same sort of burrs on the trousers of your valet when he came to you in the garden, so when I sent you to your mother, and before going in search of your sister myself, I found Rogers’ room and looked through it.