But what? What would
I find if I did get in? Was the detective right, and were the
bonds and money from the Traders' Bank there? Or was our whole
theory wrong? Would not Paul Armstrong have taken his booty with
him? If he had not, and if Doctor Walker was in the secret, he
would have known how to enter the chimney room. Then--who had
dug the other hole in the false partition?
CHAPTER XXXII
ANNE WATSON'S STORY
Liddy discovered the fresh break in the trunk-room wall while we
were at luncheon, and ran shrieking down the stairs. She
maintained that, as she entered, unseen hands had been digging at
the plaster; that they had stopped when she went in, and she had
felt a gust of cold damp air. In support of her story she
carried in my wet and muddy boots, that I had unluckily forgotten
to hide, and held them out to the detective and myself.
"What did I tell you?" she said dramatically. "Look at 'em.
They're yours, Miss Rachel--and covered with mud and soaked to
the tops. I tell you, you can scoff all you like; something has
been wearing your shoes. As sure as you sit there, there's the
smell of the graveyard on them. How do we know they weren't
tramping through the Casanova churchyard last night, and sitting
on the graves!"
Mr. Jamieson almost choked to death. "I wouldn't be at
all surprised if they were doing that very thing, Liddy," he
said, when he got his breath. "They certainly look like it."
I think the detective had a plan, on which he was working, and
which was meant to be a coup.
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