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“All right,” the detective cut her short.
He was still studying that odd little group: Parker, sneering, unmoved; Carlotta Drew, shaken a bit in the face of a consummation she had no doubt long desired; Mary Will, young and innocent and lovely; the old Irish woman with the tears still wet on her cheeks; and the yellow Chinaman standing patient as a beast of burden by the stairs. And finally he looked at me, whose enemy lay low at last beside the fifty candles.
“No one leaves this house until I have completed my investigation,” he announced. “You stay here, Riley, and see to that.”
“Yes, sir,” said Riley, with a determined look about our circle. Sergeant Barnes strode into the dining-room.
“A merry party—to brighten up the old house—to get things going in a friendly way again.” The words of the old millionaire spoken in his car as we rode up-town came back to me. How
