“Not with me!” insisted Miss Cornelia. “I have something to show you.”
He followed her unwillingly up the stairs, his whole manner seeming to betray a complete lack of confidence in the theories of all amateur sleuths in general and spinster detectives of sixty-five in particular. Their footsteps died away up the alcove stairs. The living-room was left vacant for an instant.
Vacant? Only in seeming. The moment that Miss Cornelia and the detective had passed up the stairs, the crouching, mysterious Unknown, behind the settee, began to move. The French window-door opened—a stealthy figure passed through it silently to be swallowed up in the darkness of the terrace.
And poor Lizzie, entering the room at that moment, saw a hand covered with blood reach back and gropingly, horribly, through the broken pane, refasten the lock.
She shrieked madly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HANDCUFFS
Dale had failed with the Doctor. When Lizzie’s screams once more had called the startled household to the living-room, she knew she had failed. She followed in mechanically, watched an irritated Anderson send the Pride of Kerry to bed and threaten to lock her up, and listened vaguely to the conversation between her aunt and the detective that followed it, without more than casual interest.
Nevertheless, that conversation was to have vital results later on.
“Your point about that thumbprint on the stair rail is very interesting,” Anderson said with a certain respect. “But just what does it prove?”
“It points down,” said Miss Cornelia, still glowing with the memory of the whistle of surprise the detective had given when she had shown him the strange thumbprint on the rail of the alcove stairs.