Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/268

 which had followed with Mrs. Barnard. Gaylor could have shouted with joy, for the inspiration he believed had come to him would but incriminate Ian Barr the more hopelessly. He adored himself for unearthing that precious hairpin, and for every question he had put to the farmer s wife. It was providential that the summons to London had not come two hours earlier.

"I'll tell you exactly who pawned that little gold box—if it is Lady Hereward's," said he to his superior. "It's the late wearer of that hairpin," and he took from his pocket a handkerchief, in an end of which he had carefully wrapped the trophy of the View Tower.

"That comes from the upper room of the place where Lady Hereward was murdered," he added, proud of the light of interest in the great man's eyes, which complimented the coup he was about to describe.

"I can tell you, too," Gaylor went on, "the first name of the woman: Liane."

The lady s maid who disappeared!"

Burrows remembered at once the connection which the name of Liane had already with the Hereward case. "By what line exactly do you reach that conclusion—for I see what's in your mind?"

Gaylor was only just assembling his battalion of deductions and arguments; but he responded promptly. "Why, in the first place, I know that the maid who took Liane s place was in the habit of using her