“Then you don’t want to be dragged into his net. I am more than Margie Marne. I have another name, as I verily believe, and the man who brought me here knows that.”
“I cannot say.”
“It is the foulest plot ever hatched in this or any other city. Look here: Mother Flintstone lived alone in squalor and apparent poverty. One night she is killed—stabbed in the neck. Why was the life of the old woman taken? Who was the man who came back to the window, back to the scene of his crime to be discovered by little Billy, the street rat? What was Mother Flintstone to that man?”
“Was he the murderer?” asked Nora.
“If not, why did he come there? As I live, I believe that man has Mother Flintstone’s blood on his hands.”
“I don’t know,” she said, dropping her voice almost to a whisper. “But go to sleep, girl. I can’t let you out.”
In another moment Margie was alone, for the woman had broken from her grasp, and the girl heard her footsteps on the stairs beyond the room.
“I see. This woman is merely the tool of the plotters,” thought the detective’s fair friend. “She serves them, while she fears Mr. Carter. Nora knows the detective, but she stands by the man who brought me to this place.”
The girl did not dream of going to bed.
She went to the window, and found it shuttered like the one in the lower room.