Midnight Part 26

"Kidder! I think you're simply elegant!" She turned to her giggling friends and introduced them gushingly. Carroll was in misery--a martyr to the cause. But Evelyn would not let him get away. Through her sudden friendship with the great detective, Evelyn was building up a reputation that was destined to survive for years, and she was not one to fail to make the most of her opportunities.

It was not until almost an hour later, when the other three girls had left for their homes--left only after they had hung around until the ultimate moment before lunch--that Carroll found himself alone with his little gold mine of data. He bent his head hopefully--

"Were you planning to eat lunch downtown?"

She nodded. "Uh-huh!"

"Suppose we eat together?"

"Scrumptious!" There was no hint of hesitation in her manner. "I've been hoping ever since we met that you'd ask me."

They found a table mercifully secluded in the corner of the main dining room of the city's leading hotel. For once Carroll felt grat.i.tude for the notoriously slow service. He begged her to order--and she did: ordered a meal which contained T.N.T. possibilities for acute indigestion. Carroll smiled and let her have her way--he was amused at her valiant efforts to appear the blase society woman.

"I really did enjoy our conversation last night, Miss Rogers."

"Oh! piffle! I don't fall for that."

"I did."

"Then why did you beat it so quick?"

"Well, you see--I suppose I was jealous of your elegantly dressed young friend."

"Him? He's just a kid. A mere _child_!"

"He seemed very much at home."

"Kids like him always do. They make me sick--always putting on as though they were grown up."

She secured an olive and bit into it with a relish. "Awful good--these olives. I love queen olives, don't you. I used to be crazy about ripe olives, but I read in a book once that sometimes they poison you, and when they do--there just simply isn't any anecdote in the world that can save you. So I figured there wasn't any use taking chances--"

Carroll let her run on until the meal was served. And it was then when she was satisfying a normal youthful appet.i.te that he drove straight to the subject which had led to this masculine martyrdom.

"The day before Mr. Warren died," he said mildly--"are you sure that your sister made the suggestion that you spend the night with Miss Gresham?"

"Her? Sure she did."

"Didn't it strike you as peculiar--knowing that she'd be in the house alone all that night?"

"I'll say it did. I asked her was she nutty and she scolded me for being slangy. So I told her I should worry--if she wanted to suffer alone, and I went with Hazel. And it's an awful good thing I did, because if I hadn't she would have been arrested and tried and convicted and hanged--or something, and--"

"Oh! hardly that bad. You're sure your sister was alone in the house that night?"

"Sure. Who could have been there with her?"

"I'm not answering riddles. I'm asking them."

"I've got my fingers crossed. The answer is that there wasn't any one there. At first I thought she was going out--but she wasn't, and when I asked her was she, she got real peeved at me."

"Aa-a-h! You thought she was going out that night?"

"Uh-huh," came the answer between bites at a huge lobster salad.

"What made you think that?"

"Oh! just something. You know, I don't get credit for having eyes, but I sure have. And I never did understand that business anyway. But then Sis always has been the queerest thing--ever since she married Gerald.

Say--" she looked up eagerly--"ain't he the darndest old crab you ever saw in your life?"

"Why, I--"

"Ain't he? Honest?"

"He's not exactly jovial."

"He's a lemon! Just a plain juicy lemon. And I think she was a nut for marrying him."

"But--" Carroll proceeded cautiously--"you made the remark just now that something was the queerest thing. What did you mean by that?"

"Oh! I guess I was crazy--or something. But she got sore at me when I asked her--"

"Who?"

"Sis."

"What did you ask her?"

"Why--" she looked up innocently--"about that suit-case!"

"What suit-case? When was it?"

"It was the day before Mr. Warren died--I always remember everything now by that date. Anyway--I went in her room that morning to ask something about what I should take to Hazel's--and what do you think she was doing?"

"I'll bite," he answered with a.s.sumed jocularity--"what was she doing?"

"Packing a suit-case!"

"No?" Carroll was keenly interested--struggling not to show it.

"Yes, sir. I asked her what was she doing it for--and that's when she got peeved. I told you she was a queer one."

"Indeed she must be. Packing a suit-case--"

"And that ain't all that was funny about that, either, Mr. Carroll."

"No? What else about it was peculiar?"

"That suit-case--" and Evelyn lowered her voice to an impressive whisper--"was gone from the house the next day--and the day after it showed up again and when I asked Sis wasn't that funny she told me to mind my own business!"