When the door had shut behind her, Anderson turned to Dale, the corner
of blue-print which he had taken from the Doctor in his hand.
“Now, Miss Ogden,” he said tensely, “I have here a scrap of blue-print
which was in Dick Fleming’s hand when he was killed. I’ll trouble you
for the rest of it, if you please!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I DIDN’T KILL HIM.”
“The rest of it?” queried Dale with a show of bewilderment, silently
thanking her stars that, for the moment at least, the incriminating
fragment had passed out of her possession.
Her reply seemed only to infuriate the detective.
“Don’t tell me Fleming started to go out of this house with a blank
scrap of paper in his hand,” he threatened. “He didn’t start to go out
at all!”
Dale rose. Was Anderson trying a chance shot in the dark—or had he
stumbled upon some fresh evidence against her? She could not tell from
his manner.
“Why do you say that?” she feinted.
“His cap’s there on that table,” said the detective with crushing
terseness. Dale started. She had not remembered the cap—why hadn’t she
burned it, concealed it—as she had concealed the blue-print? She passed
a hand over her forehead wearily.
Miss Cornelia watched her niece.
“It you’re keeping anything back, Dale—tell him,” she said.
“She’s keeping something back all right,” he said. “She’s told part of
the truth, but not all.” He hammered at Dale again. “You and Fleming
located that room by means of a blue-print of the house. He
started—_not_ to go out—but, probably, to go up that staircase. And he
had in his hand the rest of this!” Again he displayed the blank corner
of blue paper.
Dale knew herself cornered at last. The detective’s deductions were too
shrewd; do what she would, she could keep him away from the truth no
longer.
“He was going to take the money and go away with it!” she said rather
pitifully, feeling a certain relief of despair steal over her, now that
she no longer needed to go on lying—lying—involving herself in an
inextricable web of falsehood.
“Dale!” gasped Miss Cornelia, alarmed. But Dale went on, reckless of
consequences to herself, though still warily shielding Jack.
“He changed the minute he heard about it. He was all kindness before
that—but afterward—” She shuddered, closing her eyes. Fleming’s face
rose before her again, furious, distorted with passion and greed—then,
suddenly, quenched of life.
Anderson turned to Miss Cornelia triumphantly.
“She started to find the money—and save Bailey,” he explained, building
up his theory of the crime. “But to do it she had to take Fleming into
her confidence—and he turned yellow. Rather than let him get away with
it, she—” He made an expressive gesture toward his hip pocket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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