“You do believe that part of the story, then:  that she was going to elope with Warren?”

“I do.  I don’t want to—­but I’m honest with myself.”

“Then,” exclaimed Leverage with a slight touch of exasperation in his manner—­“who in thunder could have killed Warren if she didn’t?  And when?”

“That,” said Carroll simply, “is what I hope to find out.”

“From where?”

“From the lips of Mrs. Lawrence.  I’m going to have a talk with her.”

Carroll was far from happy during his drive to the Lawrence home.  The Warren mystery seemed to be verging on a solution, but in Carroll’s breast there was none of the pardonable surge of elation which normally was his under these circumstances.  It had been a peculiar case from the first.  The dramatis personae had all been of the better type, with the single exception of William Barker—­they had been persons against whom the detective was loath to believe ill.  And, most eagerly, he had shied from the belief that Mrs. Lawrence was connected in a sinister way with the death of Roland Warren.

Yet he found himself en-route to her home, facing the ordeal of an interview with her—­an ordeal for her as well as for him—­and one through which he feared she could not safely come.  For, frankly as Carroll had admitted to his friend that he hoped to find Naomi innocent—­he was yet honest and fearless, and failure of the woman to clear herself meant her arrest.  Carroll was determined upon that—­yet he dreaded it as a child dreads the dentist—­as something painful beyond belief.

He rang the bell—­then groaned as Evelyn Rogers greeted him effusively.  She ushered him ostentatiously into the parlor and drew up a chair close to his—­

“Mr. Carroll—­it’s just simply scrumptuous of you to call on me informally like this.  I can’t tell you how tickled I am.  I was sitting upstairs, simply bored to extinction.  Sis has been a terrible drag on me recently—­really you’d have thought there had been a death in the family.  Or something!  It’s been simply graveyardy!  And now you come in—­like a darling angel—­and save me from the willywoggles.  You’re a dear, and—­”

“But—­but—­I really came to see your sister.”

“Oh! pff!  That’s what poor dear Roland used to say all the time.  But I always knew I was the one he wanted to see.  Goodness, he was simply crazy about me—­but of course Sis never understood that.  She hasn’t yet realized that I’m grown up.”

“Peculiar how blind some folks are.  But this time, Miss Rogers—­I really do want to chat with your sister.  Not that I wouldn’t prefer a talk with you.  So if you’ll tell her I’m here—­and would like to see her privately—­”

Evelyn rose and started reluctantly toward the door.  “I suppose it’s up to me to make myself very scarce.  But it is simply precious of you to admit you’d rather talk to me.  Poor Roland used to say that—­but he always said it as though he was kidding.  I believe you!”