“My place is here,” he said.  “You two men,” Brooks and Billy moved forward to take his orders, “take another look through the house—­ don’t leave the building—­I’ll want you pretty soon.”

Brooks—­or Jack Bailey, as we may as well call him through the remainder of this narrative—­started to obey.  Then his eye fell on Miss Cornelia’s revolver which Anderson had taken from beside Fleming’s body and still held clasped in his hand.

“If you’ll give me that revolver—­” he began in an offhand tone, hoping Anderson would not see through his little ruse.  Once wiped clean of fingerprints, the revolver would not be such telling evidence against Dale Ogden.

But Anderson was not to be caught napping.  “That revolver will stay where it is,” he said with a grim smile.

Jack Bailey knew better than to try and argue the point, he followed Billy reluctantly out of the door, giving Dale a surreptitious glance of encouragement and faith as he did so.  The Japanese and he mounted to the second floor as stealthily as possible, prying into dark corners and searching unused rooms for any clue that might betray the source of the startling phone call from nowhere.  But Bailey’s heart was not in the search.  His mind kept going back to the figure of Dale—­nervous, shaken, undergoing the terrors of the third degree at Anderson’s hands.  She couldn’t have shot Fleming of course, and yet, unless he and Billy found something to substantiate her story of how the killing had happened, it was her own, unsupported word against a damning mass of circumstantial evidence.  He plunged with renewed vigor into his quest.

Back in the living-room, as he had feared, Anderson was subjecting Dale to a merciless interrogation.

“Now I want the real story!” he began with calculated brutality.  “You lied before!”

“That’s no tone to use!  You’ll only terrify her,” cried Miss Cornelia indignantly.  The detective paid no attention, his face had hardened, he seemed every inch the remorseless sleuthhound of the law.  He turned on Miss Cornelia for a moment.

“Where were you when this happened?” he said.

“Upstairs in my room.”  Miss Cornelia’s tones were icy.

“And you?” badgeringly, to Lizzie.

“In my room,” said the latter pertly, “brushing Miss Cornelia’s hair.”

Anderson broke open the revolver and gave a swift glance at the bullet chambers.

“One shot has been fired from this revolver!”

Miss Cornelia sprang to her niece’s defense.

“I fired it myself this afternoon,” she said.

The detective regarded her with grudging admiration.

“You’re a quick thinker,” he said with obvious unbelief in his voice.  He put the revolver down on the table.

Miss Cornelia followed up her advantage.

“I demand that you get the coroner here,” she said.

“Doctor Wells is the coroner,” offered Lizzie eagerly.  Anderson brushed their suggestions aside.