He must have admitted your niece into the house last night, you know.

I must get it out of him." She gave a start, for she saw now where his drift of questions was taking them.

With a sickening sense of horror she realized that her slight suspicions were being used by him to help fashion a case against her own flesh and blood.
"What are you suggesting ?" she breathed, with a nervous look.
"Nothing at present," he said, with a quick realization of the fact that he was in danger of talking too much.

"Can you tell me if your niece is provided with money ?" "My brother gave her twenty-five pounds in bank notes yesterday--he told me." "That is enough to keep her for some weeks.

You are quite sure you cannot form any idea where she has gone ?" "No," said Mrs.Pendleton coldly, with a belated inward resolve not to be so ready in volunteering information to the police in future.
"I should like to see the room your niece occupied last night," he said.
That was a search which brought nothing to lights Barrant left the hotel just as little Mr.Pendleton returned to it with an alarmed face and a feeling of personal guilt at his failure to find Sisily.
Barrant passed him with a side glance, his mind full of the problem of the girl's disappearance.