"He may have had trouble with the combination."
"Perhaps. Anyhow, he was on the small staircase when Dick Fleming started up, and of course he shot him. That's clear enough. Then he finally got the safe open, after locking us in below, and my coming up interrupted him. How on earth did he get out on the roof?"
Bailey glanced out the window.
"It would be possible from here. Possible, but not easy."
"But, if he could do that," she persisted, "he could have got away, too. There are trellises and porches. Instead of that he came back here to this room." She stared at the window. "Could a man have done that with one hand?"
"Never in the world."
Saying nothing, but deeply thoughtful, Miss Cornelia made a fresh progress around the room.
"I know very little about bank-currency," she said finally. "Could such a sum as was looted from the Union Bank be carried away in a man's pocket?"
Bailey considered the question.
"Even in bills of large denomination it would make a pretty sizeable bundle," he said.
But that Miss Cornelia's deductions were correct, whatever they were, was in question when Lizzie returned with the elderberry wine. Apparently Miss Cornelia was to be like the man who repaired the clock: she still had certain things left over.
For Lizzie announced that the Unknown was ranging the second floor hall. From the time they had escaped from the living-room this man had not been seen or thought of, but that he was a part of the mystery there could be no doubt. It flashed over Miss Cornelia that, although he could not possibly have locked them in, in the darkness that followed he could easily have fastened the bat to the door. For the first time it occurred to her that the archcriminal might not be working alone, and that the entrance of the Unknown might have been a carefully devised ruse to draw them all together and hold them there.
Nor was Beresford's arrival with the statement that the Unknown was moving through the house below particularly comforting.
"He may be dazed, or he may not," he said. "Personally, this is not a time to trust anybody."
Beresford knew nothing of what had just occurred, and now seeing Bailey he favored him with an ugly glance.
"In the absence of Anderson, Bailey," he added, "I don't propose to trust you too far. I'm making it my business from now on to see that you don't try to get away. Get that?"
But Bailey heard him without particular resentment.
"All right," he said. "But I'll tell you this. Anderson is here and has arrested the Doctor. Keep your eye on me, if you think it's your duty, but don't talk to me as if I were a criminal. You don't know that yet."