I’m going right now. You’d better not go, anyway, as I propose to take Charley, and if we leave this place unguarded, friend Locke may come in and camp here.”
“No such luck,” returned Glenn, “I wish he would. But I’ve no desire to go and see or hear you bait that young woman.”
“I know you haven’t. But, listen here, Glenn. That young woman was found by me, crying, in that closet in that back hall there. She had a smear on her sleeve that looked to me like blood. When I went to see her a few hours later, she had washed the stain away—I saw the mark of it left. She said—or, rather Miss Vallon said, they had washed away a few drops of cocoa. Somebody else said, it might have been a red smear from a lipstick, every woman carries those nowadays. But I say, if that smear was lipstick or rouge or cocoa, why were they in such a hurry to eradicate it? Why did they notice it at all? Also, in that same cupboard was the monk’s robe, which Locke had tossed to Charley and which Charley had hung up there. That, too, had a smear of blood on it. Now, add the fact that Charley saw Miss Cutler bending over the body, that he saw her take something from the dead woman’s hand and conceal it in her bosom, add the fact—or, at least, my strong conviction that Miss Cutler has had one telephone message—if not two—from Locke, since his disappearance, and, perhaps romancing a little, remember that the girl was in love with Locke and may easily have been jealous of this strange woman—perhaps no stranger to her—oh, well, there’s enough, to my way of thinking, to get busy on.”
Glenn had nothing in particular to reply to all this, and taking Charley with him, Hutchins started off to see Pearl Jane.
But her little place was closed and locked. Nor was
