"I'll answer that!" he barked. He sprang to the phone.
"Hello--hello--"
All eyes were bent on him nervously--the Doctor's face, in particular, seemed a very study in fear and amazement. He clutched the back of a chair to support himself, his hand was the trembling hand of a sick, old man.
"Hello--hello--" Anderson swore impatiently. He hung up the phone.
"There's nobody there!"
Again, a chill breath from another world than ours seemed to brush across the faces of the little group in the living-room. Dale, sensitive, impressionable, felt a cold, uncanny prickling at the roots of her hair.
A light came into Anderson's eyes. "Where's that Jap?" he almost shouted.
"He just went out," said Miss Cornelia. The cold fear, the fear of the unearthly, subsided from around Dale's heart, leaving her shaken but more at peace.
The detective turned swiftly to the Doctor, as if to put his case before the eyes of an unprejudiced witness.
"That Jap rang the phone," he said decisively. "Miss Van Gorder believes that this murder is the culmination of the series of mysterious happenings that caused her to send for me. I do not."
"Then what is the significance of the anonymous letters?" broke in Miss Cornelia heatedly. "Of the man Lizzie saw going up the stairs, of the attempt to break into this house--of the ringing of that telephone bell?"
Anderson replied with one deliberate word.
"Terrorization," he said.
The Doctor moistened his dry lips in an effort to speak.
"By whom?" he asked.
Anderson's voice was an icicle.
"I imagine by Miss Van Gorder's servants. By that woman there--" he pointed at Lizzie, who rose indignantly to deny the charge. But he gave her no time for denial. He rushed on, "--who probably writes the letters," he continued. "By the gardener--" his pointing finger found Bailey "--who may have been the man Lizzie saw slipping up the stairs. By the Jap, who goes out and rings the telephone," he concluded triumphantly.
Miss Cornelia seemed unimpressed by his fervor.
"With what object?" she queried smoothly.
"That's what I'm going to find out!" There was determination in Anderson's reply.
Miss Cornelia sniffed. "Absurd! The butler was in this room when the telephone rang for the first time."
The thrust pierced Anderson's armor. For once he seemed at a loss. Here was something he had omitted from his calculations. But he did not give up. He was about to retort when--crash! thud!--the noise of a violent struggle in the hall outside drew all eyes to the hall door.
An instant later the door slammed open and a disheveled young man in evening clothes was catapulted into the living-room as if slung there by a giant's arm. He tripped and fell to the floor in the center of the room. Billy stood in the doorway behind him, inscrutable, arms folded, on his face an expression of mild satisfaction as if he were demurely pleased with a neat piece of housework, neatly carried out.