“Why, she came with me,” Miss Cartwright returned. “She’s outside.”
“That’s fine,” he said brightly. “It makes it easier.” He pushed the buzzer again. “Perhaps she’ll be able to help us.”
“She’ll come if I wish,” said the elder sister, “but she knows even less about it than I do.”
“I understand that,” Taylor said smoothly, “but she may remember a few seemingly unimportant details that will help me where they wouldn’t seem significant to you.”
He looked up as Peter came in. “Ask Miss Cartwright’s sister to come in for a moment. Tell her Miss Ethel wants to talk to her.”
“Amy will tell you all she can,” the girl asserted.
“Just as you would yourself,” Taylor said confidentially. He had no other air than of a man who is sworn to recover stolen diamonds. Ethel Cartwright admitted she had misjudged him.
“It must be wonderful to be a detective and piece together little unimportant facts into an important whole.”
“It is,” he answered a trifle drily; “quite wonderful.”
Amy Cartwright was brought into the deputy-surveyor’s room by Peter. Plainly she was of a less self-reliant type than her elder sister, for the rather startled expression her face wore was lost when she saw Ethel. She was a pretty girl not more than eighteen and like her sister dressed charmingly.