The District-Attorney sat back and wiped his forehead. It had been a hard day's work. "Don't you, Herrick, want to take a look at the curiosity without which I might as well have asked a clam for a Fourth of July oration?"
The hair was spread out and thinned under the lamp. And now Herrick could see distinctly that it was of two shades. The outer curl was the dark red of Nancy Cornish; hidden within it was a smaller lock of a singularly fine light shade, like the red of golden fire. This it was which had wrung the address from Denny and stricken down Christina in a faint.
"Nancy Cornish hid it there in the message she was allowed to send," guessed Herrick. "She was certain Miss Hope would know the head it came from."
"Then I needn't point out to a gentleman of your discernment that it was the head which astonished Joe Patrick on the night of Ingham's murder. Directly afterward, I think Miss Hope stored that head, inconspicuously, with her friends in the Arm of Justice."
Denny, rabid with impatience, seemed eating them alive with his savage eyes. "Start!" he bit out. "Go, can't you? Go! What are you waiting for?"
Kane looked up at him with a smile of triumphant ice. "We're waiting for your account of midnight in these rooms between the fourth and fifth of August. And no one stirs to Nancy Cornish till we get it."
Denny's jaw dropped and he hung against the edge of the table as if he were struck too sick to stand.
Ten Euyck, too, cried out and Kane silenced him. "Why not—since he says he's innocent?"
"You dog!" Denny groaned. "You won't save her?"
"You won't save her—you know how!"