"Isn't that true?" demanded Anderson. Dale already felt the cold clasp of handcuffs on her slim wrists. What use of denial when every tiny circumstance was so leagued against her? And yet she must deny.
"I didn't kill him," she repeated perplexedly, weakly.
"Why didn't you call for help? You--you knew I was here."
Dale hesitated. "I--I couldn't." The moment the words were out of her mouth she knew from his expression that they had only cemented his growing certainty of her guilt.
"Dale! Be careful what you say!" warned Miss Cornelia agitatedly. Dale looked dumbly at her aunt. Her answers must seem the height of reckless folly to Miss Cornelia--oh, if there were only someone who understood!
Anderson resumed his grilling.
"Now I mean to find out two things," he said, advancing upon Dale. "Why you did not call for help--and what you have done with that blue-print."
"Suppose I could find that piece of blue-print for you?" said Dale desperately. "Would that establish Jack Bailey's innocence?"
The detective stared at her keenly for a moment.
"If the money's there--yes."
Dale opened her lips to reveal the secret, reckless of what might follow. As long as Jack was cleared--what matter what happened to herself? But Miss Cornelia nipped the heroic attempt at self-sacrifice in the bud.
She put herself between her niece and the detective, shielding Dale from his eager gaze.
"But her own guilt!" she said in tones of great dignity. "No, Mr. Anderson, granting that she knows where that paper is--and she has not said that she does--I shall want more time and much legal advice before I allow her to turn it over to you."
All the unconscious note of command that long-inherited wealth and the pride of a great name can give was in her voice, and the detective, for the moment, bowed before it, defeated. Perhaps he thought of men who had been broken from the Force for injudicious arrests, perhaps he merely bided his time. At any rate, he gave up his grilling of Dale for the present and turned to question the Doctor and Beresford who had just returned, with Jack Bailey, from their grim task of placing Fleming's body in a temporary resting place in the library.
"Well, Doctor?" he grunted.
The Doctor shook his head "Poor fellow--straight through the heart."
"Were there any powder marks?" queried Miss Cornelia.
"No--and the clothing was not burned. He was apparently shot from some little distance--and I should say from above."
The detective received this information without the change of a muscle in his face. He turned to Beresford--resuming his attack on Dale from another angle.