“It is a new way to look,” Cray agreed, with a thoughtful air; “and we will look that way, you rest assured. We will at once get in touch with this cousin, you will give us his address, and learn where he was and how employed on the night of Doctor Waring’s death. We still have to face the problem of an outsider’s exit from a locked room, and though it seems more explicable in the case of a member of the household, yet a new suspect brings fresh conditions, and perhaps fresh evidence, which may show us where to look. At any rate, we must speedily find Mr. Maurice Trask.” CHAPTER IX A LOVE LETTER “Look here, Esther,” said old Salt to his wife, “that’s a mighty curious case over at Waring’s.” “How you do talk! I should think that to you and me, knowing and loving John Waring as we did, you’d have no doings with the curious part of it! As for me, I don’t care who killed him. He’s dead, isn’t he? It can’t bring him back to life to hang his murderer. And to my mind it’s heathenish—all this detectiving and evidencing—or whatever they call it. Whom do they suspect now? You?” Adams looked at his wife with a mild reproach. “Woman all over! No sense of justice, no righteous indignation. Don’t you know the murderer must be found and punished? That is if it was a murder.” “Of course it was! That blessed man never killed himself! And he about to marry Emily Bates—a lady, if ever there was one!” “Well, now you listen to me, Esther, and whatever you do, don’t go babbling about this. They say the Jap, who vamoosed from the Waring house, made a line of foot tracks in the snow. The snow’s crusted over, you know, and those footprints are about as clear now as when they were made.” “Huh! footprints! Corinth is full of footprints.” “Yes, but these—listen, Esther—these lead straight from the Waring house, over to this house. And back again.” “How can they?” Mrs. Adams looked mystified. “That Japanese didn’t come over here.” “You can’t say that he didn’t. And, look here, Esther, where’s Miss Austin? What’s she doing?” “Miss Austin? She’s in her room. She hasn’t been quite up to the mark for a day or two, and she’s had her meals upstairs.” “What’s the matter with her?” “A slight cold, she says. I can’t make her out, Salt. What’s she doing here, anyway?” “Don’t pester her, my dear. How you and Bascom do love to pick at that girl! Why does she have to do anything?” “It’s queer, though. And I hate a mystery.” “Well, she is one—I grant you that. Have you told her about Doctor Waring? Though I daresay it wouldn’t interest her.” “And I daresay it would! Why, that girl cut his picture out of the paper, and she did have one stuck up on her dresser, till I looked at it sort of sharp like, and she put it away.” “Poor child! Can’t even have a newspaper cutting, if she wants it! You’re a tyrant, Esther! Don’t you ever try to boss me like that!”