"I do 'member one lil' thing," stammered the old man. "Mis' Eunice, she done tole me to-gib 'er——"
"Yassah, dat's ezackly what she done said. She 'splained the doctah might want to go in the liburry befo' I come back."
"Then you did give it to Miss Eunice?"
"She grabbed it fum me, right outen my han', and tole me to git erlong. An' dat's de whole Gawd's truf, Marse Chalmers."
"All right," nodded Warriner, and Effingham retired with every indication that he was glad to get away.
"Anything is voodoo to one of the old-time darkies," smiled Warriner. "A bit of colored ribbon and two crossed sticks is a good enough 'cunjer' for almost any emergency."
"I recall your threat at the inquest about the postern-door," I assented. "It brought home the bacon without delay. All the same, my dear chap, you must admit that these revelations are most disturbing. I don't know——"
"——what to think of Eunice Trevor." Warriner had interrupted to finish out my sentence for me. "But let me sum up my conclusions to date," he continued.
"Miss Trevor was on the library terrace around one o'clock. Presumably she received a signal from the observation point on Sugar Loaf that Francis Graeme was lying dead, and that she might safely enter the room, and abstract the iron despatch-box which was supposed to contain the will disinheriting John Thaneford. She hadn't the nerve to examine the box in the dead man's presence, or she may have been alarmed by some interruption from without—say Effingham's summons to luncheon. The thought occurred to her of blinding her own trail, and so she snatched a cocoon at random from the case of mounted specimens, daubed it with library gum, and stuck it on the crack of the postern-door, of course from the outside, as she was making her escape by the secret entrance. Naturally she was not aware that, in her haste, she had dropped one of her roses in the passageway.