“Upstairs!  Then the thing to do, if we can get that paper from the Doctor, is to locate the room at once.”

Jack Bailey did not recognize the direction where her thoughts were tending.  It seemed terrible to him that anyone should devote a thought to the money while Dale was still in danger.

“What does the money matter now?” he broke in somewhat irritably.  “We’ve got to save her!” and his eyes went to Dale.

Miss Cornelia gave him an ineffable look of weary patience.

“The money matters a great deal,” she said, sensibly.  “Someone was in this house on the same errand as Richard Fleming.  After all,” she went on with a tinge of irony, “the course of reasoning that you followed, Mr. Bailey, is not necessarily unique.”

She rose.

“Somebody else may have suspected that Courtleigh Fleming robbed his own bank,” she said thoughtfully.  Her eye fell on the Doctor’s professional bag—­she seemed to consider it as if it were a strange sort of animal.

“Find the man who followed your course of reasoning,” she ended, with a stare at Bailey, “and you have found the murderer.”

“With that reasoning you might suspect me!” said the latter a trifle touchily.

Miss Cornelia did not give an inch.

“I have,” she said.  Dale shot a swift, sympathetic glance at her lover, another less sympathetic and more indignant at her aunt.  Miss Cornelia smiled.

“However, I now suspect somebody else,” she said.  They waited for her to reveal the name of the suspect but she kept her own counsel.  By now she had entirely given up confidence if not in the probity at least in the intelligence of all persons, male or female, under the age of sixty-five.

She rang the bell for Billy.  But Dale was still worrying over the possible effects of the confidence she had given Doctor Wells.

“Then you think the Doctor may give this paper to Mr. Anderson?” she asked.

“He may or he may not.  It is entirely possible that he may elect to search for this room himself!  He may even already have gone upstairs!”

She moved quickly to the door and glanced across toward the dining-room, but so far apparently all was safe.  The Doctor was at the table making a pretense of drinking a cup of coffee and Billy was in close attendance.  That the Doctor already had the paper she was certain; it was the use he intended to make of it that was her concern.

She signaled to the Jap and he came out into the hall.  Beresford, she learned, was still in the kitchen with his revolver, waiting for another attempt on the door and the detective was still outside in his search.  To Billy she gave her order in a low voice.

“If the Doctor attempts to go upstairs,” she said, “let me know at once.  Don’t seem to be watching.  You can be in the pantry.  But let me know instantly.”

Once back in the living-room the vague outlines of a plan—­a test—­ formed slowly in Miss Cornelia’s mind, grew more definite.