[Pg 164] They began with the pine grove. Needles carpeted the ground, slippery smooth, a beaten trail winding between the tree trunks. Beyond it the path ascended the bare slope to the summer-house. “No place to hide here,” Rawson said. “The murderer, if Mrs. Stokes’ story is true, was either in the open or in the summer-house.” They paused, moved on, bent for a closer scrutiny of the dry grass, searched for an imprint in the pebbled walk. Secretive as the rest of the island, the way divulged nothing. Sybil’s light foot had made no faintest mark, she had gone to her death leaving no track nor trace. The summer-house, a small, six-sided building, was covered by a thick growth of Virginia creeper that swathed its rustic shape. In four of its walls [Pg 165]the vines, matted into a mantle of green, had been cut away to form windows. Framed in these squares sea and land views were like pictures brilliantly bright from the shaded interior. The other two sides held the entrances, one giving on the path that descended to the pine grove, one to its continuation to the Point. A circular seat ran round the walls and a table in the same bark-covered wood was the only movable piece of furniture. This was drawn up against the seat at one side. Rawson moved it out as the other two ran exploring eyes over the walls, the door-sills and the floor of wooden planking upon which a few leaves were scattered. [Pg 165] “Here,” he cried suddenly. “What’s this?” and drew from a crevice where the legs crossed, some scraps of a coarse gold material. He held them up against the light of the opening—three short strands of what might have been the gilt string used to tie Christmas packages. “What do you know about this?” he said, offering them to Bassett’s gaze. [Pg 166] [Pg 166] Bassett looked, and Williams with craned neck and lifted brows looked too. They were exactly of a length, broken filaments of thread attached to the end of each. “They’ve been torn off something,” Rawson indicated the threads, “caught in that joint of the table legs and pulled off. Did she have anything like this on her dress anywhere, a trimming or——” “Fringe,” Bassett interrupted, “the fringe on her sash.”
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