“What are you talking about, Liza Bascom?”
Mrs. Peyton appeared in the doorway, and though she asked the question, it was fairly evident that she knew the answer, and had been listening.
“Yes,” she went on, “I’ve been listening at the door, and I’m glad I did. First of all, I won’t have Doctor Waring’s name traduced, and next, if there’s a girl implicated in the matter, the whole truth about her has got to come out! I know the girl, she was here Sunday afternoon, and a more brazen-faced, bold-mannered chit, I never want to see!”
“She was here?” asked the bewildered Cray. “You know her?”
“I know all I want to know of her,” Mrs. Peyton declared. “Yes, she was here—came over with Emily Bates and Pinky. Wouldn’t condescend to be really one of us, but just acted offish and seemed to me about half-witted.”
“Don’t be silly,” put in Miss Bascom. “That’s the last thing to say of her! Whatever that girl may be she’s got all her wits about her! I can see that for myself.”
“Was Doctor Waring present when Miss Austin was here?” asked Cray, thinking hard.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Peyton, “and that’s a strange thing. When he first saw her—unexpectedly, you know—he dropped his teacup.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Peyton said. “He declared afterward he had never seen the girl before—but—oh—I can’t believe she came back here that night!”
“Of course she didn’t,” Cray said. “How could she get in, unless someone admitted her.”
“There’s the French window in the study,” Mrs. Peyton suggested, uncertainly. “Doctor Waring could have let her in that way—”
“Well, he didn’t!” Miss Bascom declared. “Land! I’ve known John Waring all my life, and he’s not the kind of man that had anything to do with flirtatious young women.”
Of a truth, Liza Bascom had known Waring for many years and had spent a number of them in desperate efforts to persuade him to renounce bachelorhood in her favor.
Yet her words carried little weight with Attorney Cray, who fancied that he knew men better than the insistent spinster possibly could.
“Miss Bascom,” he said, after further thought, “and Mrs. Peyton, too, I’m going to ask you—I’m going to instruct you to keep this matter quiet until after the funeral of Doctor Waring. That occurs tomorrow, and I want a day or so to look into this thing quietly. We would gain nothing by rushing matters. I will see Miss Austin, of course, and rest assured, if she is guilty of any wrong doing, she shall not escape. But it is a serious matter to accuse a suspect without giving any chance for explanation—”