She had told him her story only in baldest outline, with scarcely a
reference to her own personal acts, with barely a single detail. There
must be something, something that perhaps she had overlooked, something,
just the merest hint of something that would supply a starting point,
give him a glimmer of light.
She came back from across the room, and sank down in her chair again.
She did not speak--the question, that meant life and death to them both,
was in her eyes.
Jimmie answered the mute interrogation tersely.
"Not yet!" he said. Then, almost curtly, in a quick, incisive way, as
the keen, alert brain began to delve and probe: "You say this man Clarke
never returned to the house after that night?"
She nodded her head quietly.
"You are sure of that?" he insisted.
"Yes," she said. "I am sure."
"And you say that all these years you have kept a watch on the man who
is posing as your uncle, and that he never went anywhere, or associated
with any one, that would afford you a clew to this Crime Club?"
"Yes," she said again.
It was a moment before Jimmie Dale spoke.
"It's very strange!" he said musingly, at last. "So strange, in fact,
that it's impossible. He must have communicated with the others, and
communicated with them often. The game they were playing was too
big, too full of details, to admit of any other possibility.
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