“Do you believe in circumstantial evidence?” she asked him with seeming ingenuousness.
“It’s my business,” said the detective stolidly. Miss Cornelia smiled.
“While you have been investigating,” she announced, “I, too, have not been idle.”
The detective gave a barking laugh. She let it pass.
“To me,” she continued, “it is perfectly obvious that one intelligence has been at work behind many of the things that have occurred in this house.”
Now Anderson observed her with a new respect.
“Who?” he grunted tersely.
Her eyes flashed.
“I’ll ask you that! Some one person who, knowing Courtleigh Fleming well, probably knows of the existence of a Hidden Room in this house and who, finding us in occupation of the house, has tried to get rid of me in two ways. First, by frightening me with anonymous threats—and, second, by urging me to leave. Someone, who very possibly entered this house tonight shortly before the murder and slipped up that staircase!”
The detective had listened to her outburst with unusual thoughtfulness. A certain wonder—perhaps at her shrewdness, perhaps at an unexpected confirmation of certain ideas of his own—grew upon his face. Now he jerked out two words.