Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/78

66 "Yes. We can reach it from the hall without disturbing Mr. Lorne. The boudoir connects their apartments, and my sister's room has been closed since her death."

She led the way up the servants' staircase to the pretty room, rendered cheerful and summery by white wicker furniture and gay chintz draperies. It seemed impossible that tragedy should ever have entered here, yet the detective's eye focussed at once upon a garishly-beaded Indian basket upon the under shelf of the table. From it overflowed a tangle of vari-colored silken threads; and in its center a square of tan linen, held in an oval embroidery-frame, showed a glowing poppy half finished from which a scarlet thread like a thin stream of blood meandered over the side of the basket.

Odell took up the square of embroidery.

"The needle is not here," he commented. "The doctor took it for analysis, no doubt."

"Yes. I think he feared that the poisoning which resulted from its prick might have been due to some of those new dyes in the silk, for he took some of that also; but he told us later that he had discovered nothing that could in any way account for the fatal result." Miss Meade touched the back of a low chair. "Here is where my sister sat when it happened, Sergeant Odell; and I was seated across the table, using the Martha Washington sewing-stand there. What are you looking for?"

"The packet from which the embroidery needle was taken," he responded.

She delved into the brilliant disorder of the basket and brought forth a black paper packet which she handed to him. He opened it, glanced at the needles, and put it into