“That will be all, Pyne,” he said at length. “But please send Beedle to us at once.”
Beedle came and stood before us with sullen aggressiveness. Vance questioned her along the same lines as he had taken with Pyne. Her answers, for the most part monosyllabic, added nothing to what had already been learned. But at the end of the brief interview Vance asked her if she had happened to look out of the kitchen window that morning before breakfast.
“I looked out once or twice,” she answered defiantly. “Why shouldn’t I look out?”
“Did you see any one on the archery range or in the rear yard?”
“No one but the professor and Mrs. Drukker.”
“No strangers?” Vance strove to give the impression that the fact of Professor Dillard’s and Mrs. Drukker’s presence in the rear yard that morning was of no importance; but, by the slow, deliberate way in which he reached into his pocket for his cigarette-case, I knew the information had interested him keenly.
“No,” the woman replied curtly.
“What time did you notice the professor and Mrs. Drukker?”
“Eight o’clock maybe.”
“Were they talking together?”