The district attorney and the major looked unconvinced, and the latter, turning toward Miss Tuttle, asked if she had any remark to make on the subject.
But she could only repeat Mr. Jeffrey’s statement.
“These are questions _I_ can not answer either. I have said that I stopped at the library door, which means that I saw nothing of what passed within.”
Here the major asked where Mrs. Jeffrey’s letter was to be found. It was Mr. Jeffrey who replied:
“Search in my room for a book with an outside cover of paper still on it. You will probably find it on my table. The inner cover is red. Bring that book here. Our secret is hidden in it.”
Durbin disappeared on this errand. I followed him as far as the door, but I did not think it necessary to state that I had seen this book lying on the table when I paid my second visit to Mr. Jeffrey’s room in company with the coroner. The thought that my hand had been within reach of this man’s secret so many weeks before was sufficiently humiliating without being shared.
I made my way to the front door, but returned almost immediately. Drawing the major aside, I whispered a request, which led to a certain small article being passed over to me, after which I sauntered out on the stoop just in time to encounter the spruce but irate figure of Mr. Moore, who had crossed from the opposite side.
“Ah!” said I. “Good morning!” and made him my most deferential bow.
He glared and Rudge glared from his place on the farther curb. Evidently the police were not in favor with the occupants of the cottage that morning.
“When is this to cease?” he curtly demanded. “When are these early-morning trespasses upon an honest citizen’s property coming to an end? I wake with a light heart, expecting that my house, which is certainly as much mine as is any man’s in Washington, would be handed over this very day for my habitation, when what do I see—one police officer leaving the front door and another sunning himself in the vestibule. How many more of you are within I do not presume to ask. Some half-dozen, no doubt, and not one of you smart enough to wind up this matter and have done with it.”
“Ah! I don’t know about that,” I drawled, and looked very wise.
“Possibly,” I returned, in a way to exasperate a saint.