She stole a glance at the veiled eyes of the Unknown. He was lying limply back in his chair, as if the excitement had been too much for him—and yet she could have sworn she had seen him leap to his feet, like a man in full possession of his faculties, when she had given her false cry of alarm.
“Then why did you—” began Dale dazedly, unable to fathom her aunt’s reasons for her trick.
“Because,” interrupted Miss Cornelia decidedly, “that money’s in this room. If the man who took it out of the safe got away with it, why did he come back and hide there?”
Her forefinger jabbed at the hidden chamber wherein the masked intruder had terrified Dale with threats of instant death.
“He got it out of the safe—and that’s as far as he did get with it,” she persisted inexorably. “There’s a hat behind that safe, a man’s felt hat!”
So this was the discovery she had hinted of to Anderson before he rebuffed her proffer of assistance!
“Oh, I wish he’d take his hat and go home!” groaned Lizzie inattentive to all but her own fears.
Miss Cornelia did not even bother to rebuke her. She crossed behind the wicker clothes hamper and picked up something from the floor.
“A half-burned candle,” she mused. “Another thing the detective overlooked.”
She stepped back to the center of the room, looking knowingly from the candle to the Hidden Room and back again.