Miss Cornelia stared at him--disappointment written large on her features.

He allowed himself a little ironic smile.
"Did you ever try a good cigar when you wanted to think ?" he queried suavely, puffing upon his own.
But Miss Cornelia's spirit was too broken by the collapse of her dearly loved and adroitly managed scheme for her to take up the gauge of battle he offered.
"I still believe it was the Doctor," she said stubbornly.

But her tones were not the tones of utter conviction which she had used before.
"And yet," said the detective, ruthlessly demolishing another link in her broken chain of evidence, "the Doctor was in this room tonight, according to your own statement, when the anonymous letter came through the window." Miss Cornelia gazed at him blankly, for the first time in her life at a loss for an appropriately sharp retort.

It was true--the Doctor had been here in the room beside her when the stone bearing the last anonymous warning had crashed through the windowpane.

And yet-- Billy's entrance in answer to Beresford's ring made her mind turn to other matters for the moment.