“What did you ask her?”

“Why—­” she looked up innocently—­“about that suit-case!”

“What suit-case?  When was it?”

“It was the day before Mr. Warren died—­I always remember everything now by that date.  Anyway—­I went in her room that morning to ask something about what I should take to Hazel’s—­and what do you think she was doing?”

“I’ll bite,” he answered with assumed jocularity—­“what was she doing?”

“Packing a suit-case!”

“No?” Carroll was keenly interested—­struggling not to show it.

“Yes, sir.  I asked her what was she doing it for—­and that’s when she got peeved.  I told you she was a queer one.”

“Indeed she must be.  Packing a suit-case—­”

“And that ain’t all that was funny about that, either, Mr. Carroll.”

“No?  What else about it was peculiar?”

“That suit-case—­” and Evelyn lowered her voice to an impressive whisper—­“was gone from the house the next day—­and the day after it showed up again and when I asked Sis wasn’t that funny she told me to mind my own business!”

CHAPTER XV

A TALK WITH HAZEL GRESHAM

Carroll tried to appear disinterested—­strove to make his manner casual; jocular even.  Evelyn was piecing the threads of circumstances together and the events surrounding the Warren murder were slowly clarifying in Carroll’s brain.

But he knew that now, of all times, he must keep her from thinking that he had any particular interest in her chatter.  She was completely off guard—­and he knew that for his own interests, she must remain so.

So he assumed a bantering attitude—­he resorted to what she would have termed “kidding.”

“Aren’t you the observant young woman, though?  Not a single thing escapes your eagle eye, does it?”

She pouted.  “Oh! rag me if you want to.  But I am terribly noticing.  There ain’t many things that happen which I don’t get wise to.”

“Not even vanishing suit-cases, eh?”

“No:  not even that.  It was funny about that, though.  At first I thought maybe Sis was packing up to go meet Gerald in Nashville—­but I figured out that it was bad enough to have to live with him here without chasing all over the country after him.”

“You say that suit-case left the house after she packed it?”

“Sure pop.”

“Who took it?”

“I don’t know.  Sis was out a couple of times that day—­so I guess she did.”

Carroll shrugged.  “She was probably sending some of Mr. Lawrence’s belongings to him in Nashville.”

“Huh!  There’re some things even a great detective like you don’t know.  Don’t you suppose I noticed that the clothes she was packing in that suit-case were hers?”

“Really?”

“You bet your life, I noticed.  You see,” she grew suddenly confidential.  “There’s a certain kind of perfume Sis uses—­awful expensive.  Roland Warren used to bring it to her.  Well, I’ve been using it too—­and Sis never did get wise.  I only used it when she did—­and when she smelled it, she didn’t know that she was smelling what I had on.  Well, it isn’t likely she was sending that to Gerald, is it?”