Bailey glanced out the window.
“It would be possible from here. Possible, but not easy.”
“But, if he could do that,” she persisted, “he could have got away, too. There are trellises and porches. Instead of that he came back here to this room.” She stared at the window. “Could a man have done that with one hand?”
“Never in the world.”
Saying nothing, but deeply thoughtful, Miss Cornelia made a fresh progress around the room.
“I know very little about bank-currency,” she said finally. “Could such a sum as was looted from the Union Bank be carried away in a man’s pocket?”
Bailey considered the question.
“Even in bills of large denomination it would make a pretty sizeable bundle,” he said.
But that Miss Cornelia’s deductions were correct, whatever they were, was in question when Lizzie returned with the elderberry wine. Apparently Miss Cornelia was to be like the man who repaired the clock: she still had certain things left over.
For Lizzie announced that the Unknown was ranging the second floor hall. From the time they had escaped from the living-room this man had not been seen or thought of, but that he was a part of the mystery there could be no doubt. It flashed over Miss Cornelia that, although he could not possibly have locked them in, in the darkness that followed he could easily have fastened the bat to the door. For the first time it occurred to her that the archcriminal might not be working alone, and that the entrance of the Unknown might have been a carefully devised ruse to draw them all together and hold them there.