“That we are working in the right direction to obtain a key to the mystery,” he responded. Then suddenly he added: “By the way, that girl Glaslyn is certainly very beautiful. I envied you, old fellow, when you took her for a row.”
I smiled. I had determined not to reveal to him her identity as the woman whom I had first discovered lifeless, but his natural shrewdness was far greater than mine. He was a born investigator of crime, and had not Fate placed him in a newspaper office, he would, I believe, have become a renowned detective.
“Glaslyn? Eva Glaslyn?” he repeated, as if to himself. “Why, surely that’s the name of the girl you met in St. James’s Park and followed to Hampton—the woman whom you found dead on your first visit to the house with Patterson? Is that really so?” he cried, in sudden amazement.
I nodded, without replying.
“Then, Frank, old chap,” he answered in the low, hoarse voice of one utterly staggered, “this affair has assumed such a devilishly complicated phase that I fear we shall never get at the truth. To approach any of those three women would only be to place them on their guard, and without their assistance we can’t possibly act with success.”
“Then what do you suggest?” I asked.
“Suggest? I can suggest nothing,” he answered. “The complications on every side are too great—far too great.”
“Only Eva Glaslyn can assist us,” I observed. “Yes. She alone can most probably tell us the truth, but her friendship for the Blains is proof positive that her secret is a guilty one, even though she was so near being a victim.”
“She was a victim,” I declared. “When I saw her she was apparently lifeless, lying cold and still in the chair, with every appearance of one dead. But what causes you to think that her secret is a guilty one?” I asked hastily.
“The Blains undoubtedly are implicated in the matter, and she, their friend, is in possession of their secret,” he argued. “As a victim, she would be prompted to expose them if she did not fear exposure herself. She’s therefore held to enforced silence.”