“I think you’re horrid!” Elsie cried, her eyes flashing. “Kim never did anything wrong or underhanded! He couldn’t have been blackmailed! He couldn’t have been involved in any thing disgraceful! How idiotic!”
“If the idea is idiotic, Miss Powell, it will meet the fate it deserves. But we must stir up those sleeping dogs of blackmailers, if they exist. It is a plausible theory, if not the only possible one, and I shall remember it.”
Whiting gave the young detective a look of appreciative interest and the glance was returned, for the two men seemed to understand each other.
“I admit it’s only a theory,” Whiting said, his prominent, muscular jaw set with a grim decision, “but you’ll be hard put to it, to trump up a better one.”
“That may well be,” Coe agreed, “but I’d be sorry to depend on one theory alone. I like to have lots of them, then, if I pick up a clue here or there, I can fit it in where it belongs.”
Like a Skye Terrier, he blinked through the absurd mop of hair that covered his forehead, and Whiting, his own brow bared, showing lines that sloped up to a point, gazed at Coe with a fascinated curiosity.
He wondered why the man chose that peculiar haircut, but it was not his business and he asked no questions.
“All right,” he said; “any of your theories ripe for discussion?”
“Yes; one of them. I think a very strong motive could be ascribed to the young man from the West,—the alternative heir, you know.”
“Allison?” said Whiting. “Oh, come, now, you’ve nothing against him.”