The Case of the Weird Sisters

Susan looked very grave. "Yes. Yes, he does. First the big lamp fell off the upstairs hall table and just missed his head. And then they had an accident m the car, and he was injured. And now... It is a lot of bad luck, isn't it?"

"I think I want to talk to Miss Brennan," Duff said, So, as soon as you're ready . . ."

They walked up the hill together. Duff accommodating his long-legged stride to Susan's short one. They were a strange pair. The little old lady with the rosy face, in her dolman and old-fashioned hat, and the tall lean man whose clothes, in spite of their unstudied style, hung on his frame with a certain grace that marked him for a city guy.

"You will have to tell me more about the Whitlock family." Duff said. "So, as soon as you're ready. . ."

"Dear me, "Susan said, "the girls are not much younger than I am. Gertrude's fifty-five. And Isabel must be fifty-one herself. They were young women when I married their father. Or, rather, when their father married me. Stephen was never passive about anything."

"What kind of young women?"

"Oh, very elegant and cultivated. They'd been abroad. They are the only people in this town who have ever been to Europe. Fve been to Chicago. Stephen took me for a honeymoon."

Duff smiled. "Cultivated? Educated?"

"Well," Susan said, "girls didn't go to college in their day. But they had music lessons, and Gertrude used to paint china. They were . . . Well, if you understood a mining town . . ."

"Tell me," said Duff.

"Stephen was a rich man. He was like the Lord of the Manor. Don't laugh."

"No," said Duff. "These small towns have industrial dynasties. His three daughters were princesses, eh?"

"Oh, yes," Susan said. "Far too high up for the young men around here. There was only the young doctor, and sometimes visiting, royalty from other towns. They were spoiled, I suppose. It "wasn't their fault"

"Stephen spoiled them?"

"Well being so high and mighty in a little town like this. They weren't very attractive," Susan said, "not really. None of them were pretty. I sometimes think if they had had to try . . ."

"For popularity?"

"Well, for attention."

"Bom to the spotlight, eh? Did you live with them long after your husband died?"

"I didn't live with them at all. I moved away. You see, they didn't want me there. Heavens! Besides, I wouldn't have liked it I wasn't anybody, Mr. Duff. Stephen just took a fancy to me, and I fell in love. Sometimes I think that if I had stopped to think . . ." She sighed.

"The girls were always hostile?"

"Hostile?" She examined the word,

"What word would you use?"

"Condescending, perhaps," said Susan. ''Not that I blame them. I don't blame them a bit. Why, Mr. Duff, I was their mother's parlor maid. So how could I stay there and pretend to be Mrs. Whitlock when I was only Susan Innes, after Stephen was gone?"

"You were very wise,'' said Duff "Your son didn't stay, either?"

"Oh, no, Innes went off to the city. He was very bright, you know, and ambitious. He's done very well. Innes is a richer man than his father was. It seems strange to think of that, but I do believe he is. Of course, times were different. Innes hasn't got Stephen's .. . well... force. Innes is bright and clever, but Stephen dominated. You know?"

"Go on," said Duff.

"Innes is more Whitlock than Innes, just the same. The girls are his family. You see, he ..."

"Condescends, too?"

"Yes, he does," Susan said. "But it was all around him in the house when he was a little boy, and he couldn't help picking it up. I saw it happen. I don't mind, you know."

"You don't, do you?" said Duff with some surprise.

"No," said Susan. "I know exactly who I am and always was. It was just for a few years that Stephen rather forced me out of myself, to keep up with him. But there's no use pretending."

Duff looked down at her placid face.

"Have you been lonely?"

"Why, no. I have a lot of friends," said Susan complacently, "and I like to read."

"Innes never wanted you to come and live mth him?" Duff watched her.

"My goodness, no. I'd make him very unhappy. Innes isn't easy with me, Mr. Duff. I don't know why. I try not to bother him."

"I know why," said MacDougal Duff. "You're a very irritating woman. The trouble with you, you are thoroughly humble and good, and nothing is so infuriating as that."

"Why, Mr. Duff!" said Susan. "Dear me, I never meant to be."

"Furthermore, the Whitlocks never impressed you one bit. You're a freak, my dear Mrs. Innes. You were probably bom self-respecting, and you never got over it."

"You're jollying me."

Duff put his arm under hers and lifted her up the steps.

"I shouldn't have told you," he said, "because it's too

late to change now. You're set in your ways. Just the same, if you ever feel the need of your son's affection, be a little petty. A little mean. A little selfish." "How you talkl" said Susan.

12

Mr. Johnson let them in.

Dr. Follett, coming downstairs a few minutes later, observed Susan's companion carefully out of the comer of his eye. He saw a tall man with a lined face, a man who looked, in an indefinable way, competent, self-possessed, and used to thought, even though his hazel eyes were now clouded over and he stood as if he were in a trance, gazing with dreamy intensity at Mr. Johnson.

So lost was he in absorbed observation of that odd figure that Susan had to touch his arm to present him to the doctor. Duffs eyes awoke. The heavy lids changed shape. Dr. Follett felt with a shock the sudden power of Duff's concentrated attention.

"Innes is asleep," the doctor said, siunmoning his smoothest professional manner to cover the shrinkage in his soul. "He is all right, Susan. Fortunately, the young people got to him in time. Another hour or two, and I shouldn't like to think about what might have happened."

"At what time were you called, doctor?" Duff made it the casual question of a more or less interested stranger.

"A little after two o'clock, sir." Dr. Follett could not imagine why he added that old-fashioned "sir."

"Poor Innes. I won't wake him, of course," said Susan. "Are the girls in the dining room?"

'They ain't up," said Mr. Johnson. He made a noise m his cheek as if he sucked a back tooth and walked away. His bulk moved silently down the hall to the dining-room door.

"I don't believe they are about yet," the doctor said. "I haven't heard them. It's rather early. They had a bad night, you know."

Mr. Johnson disappeared without having looked back, and Duff swung back to the doctor. "Where is Miss Brennan?"

"Miss Brennan is asleep, too.''

"Quite the enchanted castle, isn't it?" Duff said.

Upon the sound of a car, the front door opened to admit two men, both of them yoiing. One, Duff saw, was dark and stocky and wore a chauffeur's uniform. The other was casually elegant in gray, a tall fair man with curly blond hair, good-looking, urbane. He presented himself to the company as one conscious of his own charm. But the sight of Duff surprised him.

Fred counted faces and said quickly, "Who's with Mr. Whitlock?"

"He's asleep."

"Alone in the room?" Fred set down the suitcase he carried.

The doctor said, "Why, yes, I. . ."

"You shouldn't do that," Fred said severely and went upstairs fast.

"Am I seeing things?" said the good-looking boy, "or do I see Professor Duff?"

"You do," Duff said. "Killeen, isn't it? Five years ago."

"The famous academic memory for names and faces," Art Killeen said. "How are you, sir? It's good to see you. What are you doing in these parts?"

"Hunting the American Indian," said Duff pleasantly, and the blond boy laughed.

"No doubt you people are wondering what on earth I'm doing here," Killeen said. "I happen to be Mr. Whitlock's lawyer. I had a wire yesterday asking me to come up. He's here, isn't he?"

"Yes," said the doctor. "Yes, of course. But he had an unpleasant experience last night. I'm afraid he is asleep, Mr. Killeen, and I don't think he ought to be awakened."

Curiosity shone in the lawyer's eyes, but he suppressed it. "Isn't Miss Brennan here, too?" Killeen turned to Duff. "You remember Alice Brennan?"

"I do," said Duff. "I've come to see her myself. But this house is asleep. We must aU wait Meanwhile, doctor . . ."

Susan said, "Have you had breakfast, Mr. Killeen? I'm sure Josephine can find you a cup of coffee. I don't think they'U mind." She carried him off to the dining room.

The doctor looked uncertainly at Duff. He cleared his throat to make a remark, searching for a polite phrase.

Duff said, his quiet voice asking for the truth, "What actually happened?"

"I don't quite know," Dr. Follett said uncomfortably. "AH I know is that something went wrong with the heating arrangements, and a considerable amount of coal gas poured into Mr. Whitlock's room by way of his register. The house has a hot-air system. I suppose . . ."

"Was it an accident?" No excitement or horrid speculation. Just a question.

The doctor squirmed. "I don't know. Perhaps it was. I really couldn't say."

"Has anyone been in the cellar?''

"Oh, yes, yes . . ."

"I'd like very much to see the cellar," Duff said.

The doctor stiffened. "I'm afraid only the Misses Whitlock can give you permission, and they are not awake yet. Are you a heating expert, Mr. Duff?"

"I am a detective," Duff said sweetly.

"Oh." The doctor's eyes fell, came sharply back to Duff's face, and fell again.

"I wonder"—Duff's voice was the voice of the tempter—"if I could find the cellar. Do you know where the stairs are?"

The doctor turned his palms up. "I am in a very awkward position in this house, Mr. Duff. I am Mr. Whitlock's doctor, but I do not attend his sisters. Nor have, for many years. I'm afraid I can't help you."

"I think perhaps you can help me," Duff said with his sudden appealing smile, "but not here and not now. Suppose I call on you in your office, sometime later?"

"Very happy," said Dr. Follett with relief. "Good. Do that. I must get along. I have a call to make, and I must sleep, myself. But I shall expect you. Yes, thank you. Good-by."

Dr. Follett went out. He was a man bursting with talk but muzzled, unable to say anything.

Duff slipped his eye aroimd the hall, identified the exits and entrances, the two archways to the two front rooms, the bathroom door under the stairs, and the dining-room at right angles to it. Through this he went.

Susan was chatting pleasantly with young Killeen.

"Everybody's asleep except the chauffeur," Duff said. "I'd like very much to talk to him, Mrs. Innes."

"Then I'll just go and sit with Innes myself," she said promptly and went briskly off.

Killeen said, "She's Innes's mother, she says. Amazing. Pleasant old soul, though."

"At least," said Duff gently. "Is Innes going to change his will?"

"I don't know. Maybe so. What's going on up here? For instance, you're not looking for Indians," Killeen challenged with an air of shrewdness, "in this house."

"I lead a double life," said Duff cheerfully. "Sometunes the two halves coincide."

"I've heard what the other half of you double life is, lately. Well, well. . ." Killeen was being the old pal, on the inside track, man-to-man stuff.

Duffs mild eye put him in his place. Art Kileen got ten years younger m as many seconds. "I suppose," he murmured to his coffee cup, "I had better just wait until Whitlock can see me."

"Yes. Just wait," Duff said indulgently

When Fred appeared it was with respectful attention a servant thoroughly in his place, and MacDougal Duff went gently to work to put him out of it.

"Susan Innes recommends you," he said, when they were alone in the sitting room, having left Killeen to his coohng coffee. "So I thought, as long as the house is asleep, I'd like to talk to you."

"You're a friend of Mrs. Innes?" Fred asked, a little more ready to relax.

"I'm her paying guest, that's all," Duff said. "I happen to know Killeen. I also know Miss AHce Brennan."

"I see," said Fred, who didn't.

"They were both students of mine, m the same class, now that I remember. I used to teach, you see "

Fred looked enlightened. "That wasn't in Chicago?"

"No. In New York."

Fred nodded.

"I don't teach histoy anymore. I'm a detective. Anyhow, I have investigated various murder cases with some success. Yesterday morning at the railroad station, I saw Miss Brennan on the platform. She seemed to want to speak to me. That's why I'm here. I came to find out what it was she wanted to say."

"Does she know you're a detective now?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"She probably does," Fred said.

"Yes," Duff said, "I think so. Mrs. Innes has told me the sequence of events."

"Some sequence. Since last night, I'm pretty sure."

"Sure?"

"Sure that somebody's trying to do in my boss," Fred said. "What can a detective do in a case hke that? Is trying to kill him a crime, even if they don't succeed?"

"Certainly," said Duff, "but a very difficult one to prove."

"Yeah," said Fred, "I dunno how you'd prove it."

"As I've been able to gather from Mrs. Innes, the things that have happened might have been accidents."

"Not what happened last night That's why I'm pretty

sure now."

"Could we go down cellar?" asked Duff softly.

Fred grinned. "Why not? Tve been down there. I'd like to show you."

"It's so awkward to explain to your hostesses that you think they're up to a litde murder and therefore you would like to see the cellar."

Fred grinned wider. 'They're asleep, aren't they?"

He led Duff through the kitchen, where Josephine looked around at them without protest, and down the cellar stairs. It was a shallow, old-fashioned cellar, with stone walls that hadn't been whitewashed for a long time. Duff had to duck constantly, for the roof was crisscrossed with a large number of fat pipes, branching out of the big furnace like the tentacles of a deformed octopus. There was a coal fire. Fred looked in at it briefly.

"The fire was almost smodiered with fresh coal last night," he said, "and closed up tight Gas just pouring off."

"Who tends the furnace?"

"Mr. Johnson. The handyman around here."

"Ah, yes. Mr. Johnson." Duff lingered over the name. "Does he drink?"

"I don't know," said Fred, "but that's not the point

Look. Every one of these pipes has a damper. Well, Innes got the full dose. The other rooms were like ice. Because somebody had carefully gone around down here and turned all the dampers shut but one. That wasn't any accident"

Duff pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. He wandered among the pipes. "Which one goes to the room where Innes is?"

"This one."

"How do you know?"

'They've got labels scratched on them. See. 'Papa's room.'"

"Oh, yes."

"You'd never know otherwise," Fred said. "Gee, it's some contraption." He stood, feet apart, gazing contemptuously at ihs, heating plant.

"It more or less heats a house," Duff said mildly. "You are of the new era. Too bad we can't get fingerprints. But I suppose not."

"Mine," Fred said. "Believe me, I had some fun scrambling around here trying to find all those cocks to turn."

"That one is certainly rather well hidden," Duff said thoughtfully. "Where does it lead, do you know?"

Fred looked at the scratches. "Kitchen."

Duff thrust his hand between two of the enormous pipes.

I'Look out," said Fred, "they may be pretty hot."

"This one was turned, too? You're sure'?"

"I'm sure," Fred said.

Duff pulled his hand away. "Filthy,'' he said. "Can you tell me how a hand and arm could reach in there and not come back smudged?"

"It comes back smudged," Fred said. "Greasy dirt. I got it on me."

"Where?"

"Where? On my arm."

"Your forearm?"

"Yeah."

"Did anyone, last night, have any smudges on any forearms?"

"No," said Fred. "Lord, I'd have been onto that. They were all in their nightclothes, and I took a look. But I don't know that it matters. They had plenty of time to wash."

"I believe Miss Isabel Whitlock has only one arm?"

"That's so."

"Which?"

"Her left one's the good one."

"Do you want to put your left hand on there, or shall I?"

"What's a little dirt on the hired help?" Fred said, grinning. He hauled up his sleeve, reached in, and touched the damper of the kitchen pipe. When he pulled his arm back there was a greasy smudge on it about six inches above the wrist, on the upper bone.

"Did you try to get dirty? Don't try."

"You can't help it," Fred said, "not if you go in all the way to the damper. Do it yourself. You simply can't help it."

"I see," said Duff thoughtfully. "What's your name?"

"Fred Bitoski. Call me Fred."

"Fred," said Duff, "how does a woman with one working arm and hand wash her only forearm?"

Fred stood still, turning his left hand on the wrist. "I don't know."

"Soaks it, does she? Let's water run over it? Rubs it on a soapy rag that's fastened somehow?"

Fred crooked his arm and twisted it. "She'd have to damn near stand on her head. That kind of dirt takes scrubbing, too. But it doesn't mean so much, Mr. Duff. She wears long sleeves. Even her nightgown. all the time."

"Sleeves. Damned awkward to make a survey of the sleeves in this house."

"I've got a lot of respect for detective work," Fred said earnestly, having quite forgotten he was hired help by this time. "But honestly, I don't see what you can do. You can't prove anything. You can't make them tell you anything, or let you look around, even. What can you do?"

"As for proof, proof can wait," Duff murmured, "But I'd like to know. Wouldn't you?"

"Sure, but how can you know, and what good would it do? All I can see is, keep the boss alive and get him out of here. Heck, all three of them coxild be in on it, one one time and one another."

"Do you think they are working together? I take it we agree to suspect the Whitlock sisters."

"Yeah, and it's one of them, or two or three." Fred shrugged. "They don't even have to be working together. Just working on the same idea, separately. It's so darned vague."

"You interest me," said Duff. "Why should it occur to you that they're working at the same idea separately?"

"I dunno."

Duff stood with his tall head lost among the pipes. He seemed to be musing. In a little while he began to muse aloud.

"Yes, it's a disadvantage when the murder hasn't succeeded. One can't be as bossy as one would like. Nevertheless, it's the same problem. Just the same. Somewhere there must be a motive or a wish. There have been methods, even though they haven't worked. Times and opportunities and all that. Here, also, we have three women very peculiarly limited, each in her separate way. I would like very much to know which of them has tried murder, and how many of them—outside of making it a little easier to keep your boss alive, once we know. These three sisters, half-sisters of his, I understand. They aren't in triplicate? They're not all alike?"

"No," said Fred, "but there's not much choice."

"Still, they're different."

"Like different brands of poison," Fred said.

"What's the motive?"

"His money."

"And yet they're different," Duff said. "Do they all fit that motive?"

"In different ways."

"Is that so, indeed?" EhifTs voice was warm and curious. "Do you know them well?"

"I don't know them very well at all," said Fred, "but it don't take long to learn not to love 'em."

"I shall have to learn," said Duff. "I think I'll stop over in the kitchen."

"Alice and I ... I mean, Miss Brennan and I figured out a few things. We . . ."

"We'll talk about them," Duff promised. "But let me linger by the kitchen door now, before they wake.''

13

MacDougal Duff set himself to charm Josephine. He begged her hmnbly for a cup of coffee and would permit no fuss. He would drink it here, he said. Before long it became apparent that Mr. Duff was very much interested in the problems of a general houseworker from a new and fascinating point of view. Chat got around to the types of mistresses one drew. It seemed that Duff, in a broad, almost scientific kind of way, had made a study. People were fascinating, anyway. Aiid a houseworker's job was so bound up in himian relations. So much life to be lived on the job. Her boss made more difference to her, her boss's foibles, her boss's character. Josephine, drinking all this in, expanded when she found Duff ready to hang on her words. Of course, her experience was great, he implied. She, Josephine, must know a great deal about women. A very great deal.

Well, Josephine had been on this job for fourteen years, except for one year when she'd gone off to Mrs. Dr. Follett. But she'd come back after one year of rebellion. That was all the jobs she'd had. Still, insisted Duff, with three mistresses at once, as it were, that made four women in all, each a type. Josephine must have observed them well.

Josephine bloomed under this mind-broadening discussion. Her latent self-pity lent emotional force to her observations. She didn't quite complain, but she began to talk.

Mrs. Eh". Follett, now, she was the kind who was all the time reading up about some fancy things to cook in the Ladies' Home Journal, and she'd come out in the kitchen and mess around herself, and they never turned out good, never, just a lot of waste, mostly butter and sugar. Honest, it was a crime. And decorating the table. Mr. Duff wouldn't believe the crazy things she'd do. Have to stand

up a banana in the hole of a piece of pineapple and stick a red cherry on top so it'd look like a candle! Dumb things like that. As if it was going to taste like anything but a banana and a piece of pineapple. Besides, they had to knock the banana down to eat it, didn't they?

Duff sympathized. He understood the scorn of the professional for the enthusiastic amateur.

Of course, here it wasn't any easy job, she told him. Duff surmised shrewdly that there was prestige attached to being the Whitlock drudge, that somewhere in the village Josephine was thought of as one who moved among mysterious luxuries. Because, as became plain, Josephine was a drudge.

"They don't bother me wanting to do no cooking," said Josephine. "None of 'em ever wanted to go so far as to boil an egg, as far as I know."

How different people were from each other, murmured Duff, keeping the high impersonal plane.

That was right. Now, you take Miss Gertrude. She was the kind who hadda have everything just so. Oh, yes, even if she was blind, she could feel dust with her fingers. Kinda spooky, she was. Well, she wanted everything just so, you know, just so; but she never thought about the time you had to do it or how you was going to get it done, either. She didn't care, just so it was done. And done right.

Strict, suggested Duff. There were women like diat Fussy?

Well, no, she wasn't so awful strict. She'd tell you, that's all, and you'd have to try, but it was just that she . . . Well, now, for instance, she'd always think about how it was going to look if somebody came. You know, everything hadda always be ready for company. She didn't have so much company, for the land's sakes. But that's how she was. Always sitting so stiff and straight, just waiting like, for somebody to happen to come in and find her sitting nice and straight.

"A proud woman," said Duff. "Ah, yes."

A proud woman was right. Mr. Duff had got it exactly. She was the one that knew she was a Whitlock, she was. And a Whitlock hadda keep up to snuff. Hard on a girl, let JosephiQe tell you. Because the way she kept up to snuff was giving orders. It was funny how Miss Gertrude

could take so much credit for wanting things just so when she wasn't ever the one who went to work and put them just so. Not her! Too proud to make her own bed, though she probably could if she wanted to. She could do a lot of things, blind though she was. And awful proud of that, too. Josephine looked out the side of her eye at Duff and added quickly, "Poor lady."

Well, it was better than feeling sorry for herself, Duff suggested, and Josephine agreed glumly.

With Miss Isabel handicapped, too, Duff went on, all the little chores must fall to Josephine. How hard that must be.

"Talkiug about fussy," said Josephine, "she's the one is always at me for something. She tries to help out, though. Land, she's always flying at some job I ain't had time to get around to, but I always have to do it all over, time I get there." Josephine wrung her dishrag out slowly. "You know, Mr. Dufi, .there's two ways of doing your work. You can get it done real fast and sit down and rest and have a little time to yourself. I used to do that with Mrs. Dr. Follett. But Miss Isabel can't stand it to see me sitting stiU. She'll think of something. Something gets to worrying her. So I kinda slow up."

"Of course," said Duff. "Naturally."

"Well, if I was to go rushing around here, I'd be doing twice as much," said Josephine, "and there's too much as it is. Now she can figure out ways . . . She don't like to spend money, Miss Isabel don't, so she'll figure I can do it the hard way and save a coupla pennies. Well, I go slow, that's all. There's just so many hours. You can't blame me."

"She wants your hours full," said Duff.

"She sure don't want to waste any of my time," cracked Josephine, and Duff risked a laugh.

Josephine took it properly. They were friends.

"It seems to me you do pretty well to keep this house going at all," said Duff. "How about Miss Maud? Is she fussy, too?"

"Oh, Miss Maud! If she was the only one, it'd be a cinch. She's easy-going. A little dust don't bother her."

"If it doesn't bother her, I don't suppose she helps with the dusting, does she?"

"Her?" Josephine laughed. "She's too lazy."

"Lazy," said Duff thoughtfully. "Is she, really'?" Hesaw a qualm growing on Josephine's face and made a quick retreat to the field of psychological observation. "Tell me, would a girl rather work for a lazy mistress or for a fairly strict one?"

"Well, I'll tell you. In a way . . ." Josephine pondered. "I dont know," she confessed. "The thing is, if she's lazy and sloppy, you get so's you can't stand it yourself. "

"I see. You feel the responsibility," Duff said. Whereas, if you're told your duties strictly, you know where you are."

"Yeah," said Josephine gratefully, "that's what I mean. I don t know's I'd like it, working for Miss Maud alone. Even If she is lazy—say, she'd live in a pigsty—she wants plenty of service for herself, just the same. You know what she'll do? She'll yell for me when she's lying on her bed to come upstairs and hand her a pillow that's across the room. That's what she'll do."

"Tell me," said Duff. "suppose she yelled and no one came? Would she get it herself then?"

"I'll never know," Josephine said bitterly. "Boy, when she yells, she yells."

She fell into a moody silence. Duff said, "There's a handyman, isn't there? He does the heavy work?"

"Oh, sure." Josephine sloshed water lackadaisically in the sink.

"Where does he sleep?"

Josephine raised startled eyes. "In the barn," she said, her voice losing body. She turned her back then.

"I was just wondering if he came home drunk last night and went down and did things to the furnace."

"Nope," said Josephine. "My room's off the kitchen. The back door makes a racket if it's opened. I'd have heard him. Besides, he don't get drunk so much."

Josephine was being less communicative, even though she said words.

"You were up last night?" Duff asked.

"I never heard anything until Fred went pounding down the cellar stairs. That woke me. Then I got up." Josephine was nearly brief.

Duff rose. "I like to chat," he said, "and thanks for the coffee."

"You're welcome," said Josephine. Her eyes were uneasy. They fixed on Duffs with some appeal. She fingered the tiny gold cross that hiing around her neck. "I been here fourteen years," she said huskily, "and I dunno where to go to get another job."

Was it apology? It seemed to be. For what? For being a doormat? For being a drudge?

Duff waited quiedy, sending her his steady friendliness.

"Some things ain't right," Josephine said, and her eyes fell and her big pink hand clenched and covered the cross.

Duff saw, then, that the handyman was coming along the back of the house, outside. He would get no more from Josephine. He stepped quickly to the back door, relying on her essential meekness to watch him go without requiring an explanation.

When Mr. Johnson found Duff waiting on the narrow stoop, he stopped with one foot in a broken shoe resting on the bottom step and looked up. His unfathomable black eyes were as rudely without self-consciousness, as insulting in their complete lack of personal curiosity, as the child's had been on the train. Duff sent back his own synthetic innocence.

"You want to say something?" inquired Mr. Johnson without a flicker.

"About the furnace here," Duff purred. "Do you remember what time you banked the fure last night?"

"Ten o'clock, close to."

"It was all right then, was it?"

"Yeah." Mr. Johnson spat into the dust, but his eyes came back as boldly as ever.

Duff tried a quick carelessness. "Who closed all those dampers afterward?"

No surprise or pretense of surprise showed on the dark face. The big shoiilders denied knowledge. Duff smiled his most enigmatical smile, but the black eyes continued to take him for a total enigma in which they were not much interested.

"I wonder, did you see the lamp fall a little earlier in the evening?" Duff said.

"Naw."

''You were out of the house, perhaps?"

"Sure."

''Downtown?"

"Naw."

"Where, then?"

"In the bam."

"Alone?"

''Sure."

"See the accident?" Duff surrendered to the staccato and tried sharpness.

"What accident?"

"To the car."

"Naw."

"Where were you then?"

"In the bam."

"Alone?"

"Sure."

"What were you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Alone?" Duff tried it softly.

Mr. Johnson spat.

Duff said a few words in a strange tongue. The black eyes betrayed no light, although they were not uncomprehending.

"What about it?" said Mr. Johnson.

MacDougal Duff said, ''Thank you. I won't keep you," in a tinny voice and stood aside to let him by.

Mr. Johnson went by.

Duff stood on the back stoop for a few minutes, gnawing on his own thumbnail. After a while he took his thumb out of his mouth and looked at it, wiped it twice across his other sleeve, put his hands in his pockets, and commanded himself to stroll aroimd the house toward the front door.

One who knew Duff well would have remarked that he seemed upset.

14

Alice woke up with her cheek on the bare mattress, her tweed coat scratchy under her chin, sat up under the mass of muddled bedclothes, and looked at her watch. Ten o'clock, Saturday. And the real significance of that was that Art Killeen must have been here in this house for nearly two hours.

She began to dress in a hurry, with a guilty sense of being late to a rendezvous. Her eyes, she saw in the glass, were puffy with weariness and her hair was wild. In her skirt and blouse, she snatched a towel and her make-up I box and fled through the deserted hall to the bathroom. |

When she came out, she was on the surface a self-possessed and fairly well-groomed young woman who might have taken the wild goings-on of the middle of the night in her stride. She'd made herself seem refreshed by sheer skill, and she had beaten down her excitement. She was ready when Innes's door opened and Art Killeen came out.

Ready or not, her heart jimiped, and she choked it back when she saw with a litde shock how fair he was, how white his skin, appreciated his well-washed look and the clean line of his nose and chin.

"Good morning!" he said with the surprised pleasure that was so familiar.

"Hello, Art," said Alice, and her own voice was tired.

He was tall, and she had to look up. He was smiling radiantly. He said in a hushed voice, "Innes has been telling me. My dear, I think it's swell! Just swell!"

Alice felt sick. She knew the word "swell" in his vocabulary. She knew his convention of wholehearted rejoicing in another's success. The code, the gentleman's law. But this radiance turned her a little sick.

"Thanks, Art," she said wearily. She knew weariness didn't attract him. How was it that she sounded so tired and was so tired of the whole idea of marrying Innes? If this was triumph, if this was revenge, it had no taste to it. It was flat. The excitement she'd been struggling to conceal died of itself. It disappeared and left her weary.

He had a brief case imder his arm, and he patted it.

"Where can I go to do a little work?" he asked, still smiling.

"I don't know," she said.

"You know what it is I have to do, don't you?" His voice was colorless, deliberately, but she knew there was secret congratulation behind it.

"Yes," she said.

"He's very fond of you, Alice."

His confidential air suddenly infuriated her. She put her hand on Innes's doorknob. "I've got to say good morning," she said over her shoulder. "Somebody will find you a corner if you go downstairs."

Her coolness didn't dim the radiance of his smile.

"Aw, please, you show me," he coaxed. "Whitlock's busy talking to Duff."

"Duff!"

"Professor MacDougal Duff, none other," said Art Killeen. "Oh, yes, he's here. Didn't you know?"

Alice said briskly, "I'm sorry. Art, but I've got to talk to Mr. Duff.''

"Of course." He was quick to agree, m that charming way he had of deferring and resigning his claim on one's attention. "But I'll see you later?"

Alice tapped on the door. "Oh, yes," she said, more wistfully than she had intended.

Art Killeen was the kind of man who, when a girl said don't,' didn't. That's why they don't often say don't, thought Alice, with a shock, as if she saw through another of life's veils.

It was MacDougal Duff himself, all right, rising to say good moming, and his lean hand was warm and strong.

"Oh, Mr. Duff, you did come back! I'm so glad. Do vou know Innes?"

"I do now," said Duff.

Innes, sitting up in bed, his face flushed with a little new color, said, "How are you, dear? You got some sleep, didn t you?"

"How are you, Innes?"

"Better," he said, "better. I've been talking to this friend of yours. As a matter of fact, I've been doing all the talking."

Duff smiled. "My method," he claimed. "I believe there was something you wanted to say to me. Miss Brennan when we were so rudely separated yesterday by the train's departure."

"Oh," said Alice, "it was all this." She sat down, looking up. "I mean all the things that have happened to Lines. We were worried. Even then, we couldn't . . . Have you seen Fred? Has Innes told you about last night? Oh, what do you think?"

"My dear Alice, I've hired the man," said Innes complacently. "He's going to find out what to think and tell all the rest of us."

"I'm so glad,'' said Alice. "It's just what I wanted." She wondered how on earth Duff had got around Innes so quickly. But she realized that Duff's perfect and selfless willingness to concern himself with Innes's troubles and devote all his talents to understanding them was Duff's convincing credential. "But how do you happen to be back here?" she asked.

"I'm studying the American Indian this spring," said Duff, "just for fun. Ogaunee is my headquarters at the moment. I'm Mrs. Innes's boarder, you know."

"Oh, are you?"

"Lucky, isn't it?" said Innes, as if he, himself, had just been very clever.

"Yes, it's lucky," said Alice. "Also, it's terribly good of you to drop your own work and help us instead."

"Two birds with one stone," said Duff, a trifle grimly. "Mr. Johnson, the handyman, is a full-blooded Oneida."

"I don't," said Alice in another moment, "understand Mr. Johnson."

"Of course he's an Indian," protested Innes. "Been here ever since I can remember. Tends the furnace, washes the windows, works in the yard. He used to keep the horses when we had them. He's always been Mr. Johnson, I don't know why. Suppose he always will be. He belongs out in the bam. I suppose my sisters pay him wages. He's an Indian, all right."

Duff said, "What's the matter, Miss Brennan?"

"I couldn't place him. I thought he was so foreign. He scared me."

"Mr. Johnson's nothing to scare you," Innes said with conviction. "He's not sneaky."

"You suggest," said Duff, "that if he wanted to murder anyone he'd be rather direct about it?"

"He is direct," said Innes, frowning. 'That's what makes him so reliable. He does exactly what comes into his head. He . . ."

"But he's so mysterious." insisted Alice,

Imies pouted. "He doesn't seem mysterious to me. I'm used to him."

Duffs eyes were dreamy. "I wonder. Is he mysterious? Or isn't he? The Indian was, they say, fond of fancy speaMng, of indirect, symbolic, image-full language. He was oratorical. Your Mr. Johnson upsets my conception. Perhaps he isn't typical. But if he is . . . How I would like to know the set of ideas he lives by! Or if he has any ideas." Duff shook his head slightly. He smiled at Alice. "I don't understand Mr. Johnson either," he admitted.

Innes stirred a little impatiently. "However"—Duff roused himself—"that's my hobby, not your trouble. Suppose we get Fred up here and pool what we know? I have been hired to find out what goes on, without unnecessarily offending anybody. A very ticklish job. One that will take some careful doing. Before I meet the Misses Whidock—-who are not yet visible, are they?"

Alice shrugged.

"—let's get the facts. Facts are good enough to start with," Duff said carelessly.

Alice ran downstairs. She saw Art Killeen working on a typewriter in the sitting room as she went by. Fred was in tiie kitchen. Alice said, "May I have a cup of coffee to take with me, Josephine? Fred, Mr. Duff wants you. Come on upstairs."

Fred came to attention. "The lawyer's here," he said, watching her face.

"Yes, I know," said Alice. "But come on. Duff wants us."

As the council went into session. Duff leaned back in a chair beside Innes's bed, quite as if he had all day. Innes reclined on his pillows. Alice sat on a hassock against the wall, following eagerly, and Fred sat in a straight chair at the other side of the bed, facing Duff, his ankle on his knee, looking extremely intelligent.

"This business of the veal in the meat loaf," said Duff, "seems to yield very little. It's quite possible that Miss Isabel, who seems most active in the running of the house, deceived herself into thinking it wouldn't matter. She is, I gather, rather set against unnecessary expense. Perhaps she didn't want to prepare another kind of meat, on account of the expense, or on account of the bother, and convinced herself, therefore, that there was no reason to do so. Do you think that's possible, or am I doing Miss Isabel an injustice?"

"You're right," said Iiines wryly. ''Miss Gertrude is aloof from the details," Duff went on. "Perhaps she felt it wasn't any concern of hers. And Maud didn't hear about it beforehand. Maud may have known, at the tabid, that she was eating veal. We do know she said nothing about it But is Maud likely to have said anything about it?"

"No. You're right again. She wouldn't worry. You say you haven't met my sisters?"

"Not yet," said Duff, "but Fve been gleaning, here and there. Now, you see, the veal-eating and Mr. Whitlock's consequent iUness may have been the result of carelessness or of a simple mistake."

"In other words, an accident," said Fred, whom Duff had gently maneuvered into the position of a man with opinions to give, and who accepted that position simply.

"Yes. And since nothing was actively done, the dinner was served as originally planned, the only crime was neglecting to change it, I don't think the incident can tell us much."

"Things like that add up, though," said Alice.

"Oh, yes. Of course. Nevertheless, let's go on to the first attempt to do Mr. Whitlock harm. If it was an attempt and not still another accident The lamp fell off the table upstairs. It might have fallen by itself. None of us can see how. But we can't say it couldn't have happened. The devil in the inanimate, you know. Still, if we assume that someone pushed it over, let's see who might have done so. You point out to me that Miss Maud, who is totally deaf— Is that true, Mr. Whitlock?"

"She never hears anything that I know of," said Innes.

"Well, being deaf, she couldn't, we say, have known that you were walking down the hall. You had opened the bathroom door, malang a sound, of course, and your footsteps could have been heard. But you couldn't have been seen from upstairs? There is no glass in which you might have been reflected?"

"Lace curtain on the front door," said Fred prompdy.

"No mirror?"

"It's on the side wall," Alice said. "I was standing in front of it. I couldn't see the top of the stairs in it."

"Could you see the mirror, Mr. Whitlock?"

"No, no, I'm sure I couldn't."

"Very well," said Duff. "This crime, if one, was done by ear. The victim must have been heard approaching, and Maud can't hear. Exit Maud. What about Gertrude, who can't see?"

"She knows every inch of this house," said Innes. "She goes anywhere she pleases, upstairs or down. She knows exactly what's on every table. She knew that lamp was there. Nothing's ever changed around in this house. And her ears are sharp."

"All true," said Duff. "But tell me, when was that downstairs bathroom put in?"

"When? About... let me see ..." ' "Before or after Gertrude lost her sight?"

"Oh, after," said Innes. "Some years after."

"Yes," said Duff. "Well... I don't suppose Miss Isabel would have been prevented from pushing that lamp by the fact of her having one arm?"

"Not a bit. Isabel could have pushed the lamp," said Fred.

"Does anything about their opportunity help us at all? As far as we know, all three of them had the chance to be there in the upstairs hall at that time? Is that right?"

"Not all three," said Fred. "One wasn't. But I don't know which one."

"How is that?"

"When I came up on the front porch, on my way inside, I saw one of them through the window. She was in the parlor. The curtains were drawn across the arch so nobody would know that from the hall. But I saw her,"

"What was she doing?"

"She was looking at the newspaper."

"Oh?" Duff seemed polite but incredulous. "The local paper?"

"I dunno. Just a newspaper. But that's why I couldn't see who it was."

"You could see her feet?"

"Just her skirt," said Fred. "It was dark. They all wore dark dresses yesterday."

Duff sat still a moment. "Please realize that I am just running lightly over the facts," he said at last. "Perhaps I they aren't going to mean much. They sometimes don't. ' We shall have to get at the feellngs. Have to know why. What drives each of them. Those are, to my mind, the important things and are more likely to tell us the truth about this. But we'll clear away these times and opportunities and possibilities first. Let's leave the fallen lamp that so fortunately didn't hit you—"

"Thanks to Fred," said Innes graciously.

"—and go on to the second attempt or accident. The detour sign across the road at the bottom of the hill was moved. Now, you tell me that all three sisters were out of doors earlier that evening?" "

"Yes."

"And Isabel, rather suspiciously, went in person to fetch a woman who has a telephone."

"Yes."

"Susan Innes says people do forget her new telephone. Isabel may have forgotten.''

"Maybe," said Alice. '

"But here we come upon the significance of Gertrude's blmdness. This was a crime that was done by sight Being blind, she wouldn't have known anything about that sign, its meaning; nor would she probably have been able to find it and place it in another more or less logical position. Not without eyes."

"The dark wouldn't bother her," murmured Fred.

Duff said, "No. But this was a deed that required some light. To read, to understand, to replace. However, Maud, too, puzzles us. She couldn't have overheard you speak of the route you were planning to take."

"Maybe somebody told her afterward," suggested Alice.

"Who heard? Mr. Johnson?"

"Sure. He was the one I asked about it."

"Um," said Duff. "You don't, I suppose, know whether they were together after that?"

"No."

"I didn't see hide nor hair of Mr. Johnson that evening," said Fred wonderingly. "After that"

"But Isabel could have done it?"

''I don't see why not, do you?" said Alice.

"No, I don't see why not," Duff agreed. "Then we have attempt number one, the lamp. Not Maud, Possibly Gertrude. Possibly Isabel. We have attempt number two, the detour sign. Not Gertrude. Possibly Maud. Possibly Isabel."

"Unless . . .'' began Fred.

"Of course," Duff took up the unspoken doubt, ''unless Maud's not deaf. Unless Gertrude can see."

"But for God's sake!" cried Innes.

"You realize we must be sure."

"But for years . . ."

"Your sisters may not be totally blind or totally deaf or even totally cripples," said Duff. "A litde sight, a little hearing, a little use of the right arm, might damage these particular conclusions."

"Go on," said Innes. He leaned back, but he looked pale.

15

Duff said thoughtfully, "It will be hard to be sure. But we must try. You see, sometimes you can get at a clear and true picture of what happened by the facts of physical possibilities, by logic, and by elimination. Sometimes you can get at the same truth by a careful reading of character and the facts of character, which are true facts, of course, and solid facts; but so difficult to demonstrate that the use of them nearly always passes for intuition. Sometimes you can get at the truth both ways, and the coincidence of two kinds of facts checks and double checks your conclusion. We are now trying to fish out of confusion a few physical facts that we can believe and use to go on. Please don't be discouraged if they show no pattern. .We still have another whole class of facts to check them by.

"Let's look at attempt number three, the one made on your life last night."

"No accident," said Fred.

"I agree with you," said Duff. "This, at least, was really such an attempt. But we know almost nothing about it yet. How about opportunity? Where was everybody?"

Alice began, "Fred and I were in here with Innes, nearly all the time, until a few minutes after eleven. I got to bed about eleven ten. I must have slept for a while. About twelve, something woke me up. There was a storm, wind and rain."

"Let's find out the disposition of all of you until then," said Duff. "You went to sleep promptly, Mr. Whidock?"

"Oh, yes. It was the pill, I guess. I was pretty much on edge, and I didn't think I'd sleep, but I did. I didn't wake at all until after the doctor was here. Everybody was in here by the time I woke up." Innes pouted as if he'd been left out of a party.

"Are these your pills?" Duff picked up the box.

"Yes."

"Well, Fred?"

"Sat on the backstairs, on guard. The storm came up around eleven fifteen. Started with a lot of wind. Rain coming down in buckets by twelve o'clock. Maybe the storm woke you, Alice."

"Maybe," said Alice. None of them noticed that the chauffeur called her Alice.

"The Three Graces had all gone to bed by the time I took up my post," Fred went on. "I wouldn't know about Gertrude, though, come to think of it. She's downstairs. She could have been roaming around. But I saw hide nor hair of them from where I was. Isabel's door, which I could see, was closed all the time, and she didn't pass me."

Alice said slowly, "Just after I woke up I thought I heard a sound."

"Yes?" said Duff.

"A funny litde sound. I heard it once before. When I was on my way downstairs I heard it as if it were down there. The evening Innes was hurt. The doctor was here. I was going down after his bag. It's a little sound in the throat. I can't describe it."

"You heard it again last night!" Fred said with excitement.

"When have you heard it?" Duff asked him. "Or haven't you?"

"I think I know what she means. I heard it right after the lamp fell. As if it were up here."

"The same sound, you think?"

"I think so," Fred said. "And Josephine tells me she heard something like it, too, down at the foot of the hill, just before we left here in the car, just before our accident."

"Just before something happens, you hear noises," said Duff. "Three of you each heard at different times a small indescribable sound?"

"Nothing happened after I heard it the first time," Alice pointed out.

"How do we know?" Duff said.

"But . . ."

"No two of you heard it at the same time, I take it?"

"No, but something makes that sound. Doesn't it mean— What can it mean?"

"We must keep it in mind," said Duff, "although if the sounds weren't identical, you see, it needn't mean anything. Unless . . . Mr. Whitlock, do you know of any such sound? Has one of your sisters the habit of clearing her throat or coughing or anything of the sort?"

"I couldn't tell you," said Innes. "Not that I can remember. I'm so useless. I just don't know." He flung his palms up on the bedspread.

"Tell me," said Duff suddenly to Alice, "what was the feeling? How do you imagine die person felt who made that sound? Was there a feeling to it? If so, what was it? Don't say. You try to remember, too, Fred. What feeling does it suggest to you? Make up your minds before you hear each other's judgment. Don't analyze. Just try to remember your first quick impression."

"I think I know," said Alice in a moment

"Me, too," said Fred. Duff nodded. "It was dirty," Fred said. "Something mean about it."

"I thought it was triumphant,'' said Alice, "and satisfied and excited, too."

"Thank you," said Duff. "Now, what happened after twelve o'clock?"

"I woke up," said Alice, "and I couldn't get to sleep. I began to feel cold. Finally I got to worrying about Fred's being cold because it was freezing, really. Besides, I couldn't sleep. So I got up and came out here. That was about two o'clock, I guess."

"Was the heat coming into your room as usual when you first went to bed? Do you remember?"

"Yes, it was. I'm quite sure."

"That's helpful," said Duff. "Because, of course, the heat stopped coming up through out the rest of the house after the deed was done. The heat was normal at eleven ten?"

"Oh, yes, I know it was."

"Then the deed was not done until after eleven ten. Fred, nobody moved in the upstairs hall after that hour?"

"Nobody," said Fred. "Nobody that I saw."

"Could anyone have come up the front stairs without your seeing them?"

"Maud might have," Fred admitted, "if she turned sharp at the very top step and went off the hall toward her own room. I can't see that part. I should think I would have heard her."

"I did hear her," said Alice in a low voice.

"But nobody came this way, to Isabel's room?"

"Nobody, until Alice came."

"And after that?"

"We smelled it. I mean Alice did. I'd been sitting there so long, I guess I wouldn't have noticed it for a while longer."

"Mr. Whitlock, you had fallen asleep with the help of a drug? And you smelled nothing?"

Innes plucked at his spread. His eyes went miserably to Alice. "Very few people know this," he said, "and it's fairly imimportant, but ... I ... I have no sense of smell. You see, we Whitlocks all lack something." He said it as if he hoped it would be a joke, but he was ashamed. He was afraid Alice would recoil from him. He would never in all his life have admitted this, she knew, had he not been forced to.

She tried to smile at him. "You're lucky," she said. "You got off the easiest." But, she thought, never any perfume of flowers or of good cooking or salt in the air. And she did recoil, invisibly.

"Who knows about this lack of yours?" Duff was asking.

"My family."

Alice, thinking of the advantages, began to laugh a little

hysterically. "I wondered how you could get so close to her. Oh . . ." She choked.

"To whom?"

"Maud," said Alice. "Oh, Mr. Duff, she's dreadful!"

"I know what you mean," said Fred, with his nose wrinkled.

"What do you mean?" demanded Innes. "What are you talking about?"

"She smells . . . well. . . like an Indian," said Fred.

"Does she indeed?" Duff said.

Alice put her head in her hands. "I'm sorry, Innes. They're your sisters. Are we crazy, Mr. Duff? Is there something ugly and malign and wicked ... or are we just cruel to think so because we are healthy and they are more or less . . . deformed?"

Duff said, "I've wondered. I think it is remarkably self-critical of you, Alice, to be able to think of that."

Innes said, "Alice is sweet and good."

"I'm not."

He paid no attention. "But please don't think because they're my sisters that any of you have to guard your tongues with me. I never liked them, and they never loved me. Never. I was a little boy, and they were young ladies, and I never felt the slightest warmth from any of them. But they . . . they awe me." His voice sank. "When I get away from here I can make myself believe they don't matter very much. Put them in their place, you know. I can even feel sorry for them.

"But the minute I step back into this house, I believe again. They seem just as important as they think they are. And this house, kept up just as it used to be, and their reputations here, and the whole Whitlock background, sucks me back in. I can't help it. I. . . dislike them. They make me nervous."

Innes wound up with this understatement and looked defiantly at them all.

"They never loved you," said Duff. "Did they love their parents?"

"No. I don't know. Papa used to crack the whip. They'd hover around him like . . . like a chorus, you know. His three daughters. That's what they were. His. Like his coattails. And he got away with it."

"They resented him?"

"I don't know. But I don't think they loved him. If they loved anyone, it would have been their mother. She was dead before I was born, and Gertrude made her into a legend. But I don't know. I wasn't here. She was supposed to be something superfine, and my father was her worthy consort. And my mother wasn't worthy of him. All I know is, they don't. . . aren't affectionate."

"Toward each other?"

"No," said Innes. "Toward anybody."

"You speak as if they were all alike?" Duff made this a question.

"No, no. It's Gertrude, really. Gertrude blames me, you know. Shell always blame me, and she's cold. Maud's not . . . well, you can get along with Maud. She's happy-go-lucky. She doesn't care if you know she doesn't care. So you don't mind so much. Isabel stays away because she's always got some worry of her own. It's Gertrude who t-terrifies me now."

Duff said, calmly, "We are getting into the realm of emotion, and very helpfully so; but have we come to the end of our other set of facts? Let's be sure. Does anything occur to any of you?"

"No. But what occurs to you?" Fred said boldly.

"Only this," Duff said. "These tremendous hot-air pipes that run through the walls magnify sound, don't they? Turning the dampers is not a perfectly silent operation. They were turned while Mr. Whitlock was asleep, and Alice was asleep. And while Fred was in the hall, rather far from any register. Unless any of you heard such a sound."

"There was the storm," Alice said. "It was so noisy."

"Yet you heard the little queer cough?"

"I know," she admitted, "but it came in a kind of lull, and it was near."

"It makes me wonder," said Duff, "whether the person who turned those dampers used the storm for cover. Synchronized sounds. Waited for a blast."

"Maybe," said Fred.

"Then was it Maud?"

"The deaf can feel a storm," Innes said.

"I believe you are right. But would the deaf expect the noise of a damper turning?"

"How could it be Gertrude?" said Fred. "How could she read those labels on the pipes? How could she find all those dampers? I don't think she could."

Duff shrugged. "And Isabel?"

"Isabel . . ."

"Couldn't have washed the greasy.stain we know must have been acquired, from her own one arm."

"She could have taken off a stained sleeve, though.''

"We must find out whether she did."

"It would be her sleeve," insisted Fred, "because, look, how could she roll up her sleeve? You try it."

"She could slip out of it," Alice said, shaking one shoulder so that her dress fell low.

Innes said, "I don't follow."

"I do," said Fred. "The others could have washed their bare arms, so their clean sleeves wouldn't mean anything. Is that your point, Mr. Duff?"

"Of course that's the point," said Alice, "isn't it?"

"Ah, but wait," Duff said. "Would Gertrude know her arm or sleeve was dirty?"

"Hm."

"She wouldn't," said Alice, "unless she could feel grease on her bare skin. She certainly doesn't know about the spots on her vest. Oh, Innes, this is too bad."

"Well, they're a rum bunch," said Fred gloomily.

"Never miad that," said Innes tensely. "Now what, Mr. Duff? What's next?"

"May Fred run me down to the doctor's office?" Duff said. "And perhaps elsewhere? I shall return after lunch and give myself that pleasure of calling on your sisters. Alice, my dear, I shall want you to help me then."

"Good," said Innes.

"Meanwhile . . ."

"I shall sign a new will," Innes said, "in about fifteen minutes. After that, I think I shall be able to relax."

"I truly hope so," said MacDougal Duff gendy.

When they were alone, Alice tidied Innes's bedside table. She emptied his ash tray, brushed off crumbs. He watched her happily.

But Alice was not happy. She had realized for the first time what he was about to do and what it meant to her. Yesterday, she had thought only that it meant Killeen was coming. But now Killeen was here, and that meeting had happened. She began to see that if Innes made a will now, in her favor, she was committed to this engagement as she had not felt committed before. In a peculiar way, she.felt it would bind her. And she knew that here and now the last decision must be made and the step taken or not taken. If she let him do as he planned she was bound, as her mere promise did not bind her. And Alice was unhappy.

She saw that the bitterness that had made her cynical about the whole thing was now less strong. Somehow, the excitements she had been through had weakened it. Or maybe it was just that time had passed. She was beginning to recover, not from the blow to her heart, but from the blow to her own balance. Being Innes's fiancee was not much fun in itself. Being Innes's wife wouldn't be much fun, either. A million dollars, prestige, and as much security as a million would buy in the suffering, changing world was worth a good deal. She was sensible of that. Her brain told her so still. But we do not hve by brain alone, she thought, wistfully paraphrasing the old line.

It was worth a good deal to be Alice Brennan and the hell with it.

As she patted Innes's pillow, her mind raced to a decision. She would not feel right until she had put herself right. At the very least, Innes must know why she had promised to marry him. If he knew that clearly and believed it and still wanted her, well and good. She would still be Alice Brennan and could stand by herself. But he must know. It wasn't a question of the morals involved or the ethics or whatever the word was. It was a question of being comfortable. She was uncomfortable in that lie. Very uncomfortable. In fact, it was unbearable. She couldn't help that, whatever the moral was. Maybe she was, if not sweet and good, at least dumb but honest. Well, if she was, then that's what she was. Damn it, thought Alice.

She stood below the footboard and met Innes's eyes. She said, "You mustn't sign that will, Innes."

"Don't be silly," he said.

"I told you I was marrying you for your money. Innes, I meant that."

"I don't understand," he said. "I'm making a new will because I want you to have that . . ."

"But you mustn't until ... I mean, unless you realize just why . . ." Alice began to flounder. "I never said I was in love with you, and, Innes, I'm not."

His face changed. Pink lines grew, and the flush spread. "But you . . ." He stopped.

"I know. I let you assume that," she said unhappily. "And I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. I wanted you to propose, Innes. And I wanted to marry you."

"Don't you still?" he said thickly.

"For your money," she said.

Innes looked stupid.

"I'm not sweet and good. I'm selfish as a cat," she cried. He looked at her. "So we'U call it off, shall we?" she added hghdy and turned away.

"What's happened?" he said. "Who is it?"

"Who?"

"Yes, who? You did care for me, Alice. You can't tell me . .. Why, you . . . you've been . . ."

Alice shrugged. Then she said, more softly, "Innes, I don't dislike you. I like you quite well. It's only that I can't let you sign that will still thinking what isn't true."

Innes said, "I don't understand you."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you breaking our engagement?"

"You're to do that."

"But, Alice . . ."

"Oh, do it," she cried, "and get it over!"

She couldn't leave. Someone had to be with him. He was in danger. She turned her back. She wished she'd waited to speak until Fred was available. Someone knocked on the door.

She opened it for Art KiUeen.

Fred pulled the car up at the dcxitor's dcx)r, shoved his cap back on his head, and setded as if to wait.

"Want to come in?"

"Do I?" Fred jumped. "Say, thanks. Listen, Td bust sitting out here. You've got me going, Mr. Duff. I want to know, myself."

"Curiosity is useful for us detectives," Duff said. "It makes us nibble away at impossible problems. We shall now poke around in the attic, as it were, of Dr. Follett's memory. Something might turn up, eh?"

"Come on," said Fred.

The doctor was in and waiting for them. He seemed to have recovered a normal reticence, and he hid behind a bland show of pohte welcoming small talk. Duff oudasted these prehminaries by being perfectly reticent himself. The doctor was forced to say, at last, "Well, Mr. Duff, I wonder what I can do for you?"

"I think," said. Duff, "you can tell me about the Whitlocks. Innes Whitlock has asked me to do what I can to find out whether or not his bad luck has been entirely accidental." The doctor looked uncomfortable. "And the present roots in the past," said Duff.

"I don't know what I can tell you. I haven't been in that house for twenty-five years, until the day before yesterday. I suppose you already know why not?"

"I understand that your marriage offended Miss Maud."

'!It did. Yes, it did. But that was years ago, sir, and surely it can't have a thing to do with what's going on up there now."

"I don't suppose it has," Duff said. "But still, I'd like to hear your version of it."

"She thought I was courting her. Maybe I was. Although I thought not. I mean to say, my calls there may have made it seem that I was more interested in her than I actually was. I don't know. I don't know."

"Tell me," said Duff, "do they use the phrase 'going with' m Ogaunee?"

"Oh, yes, yes. Yes, they do."

"And if a young man is 'going with' a girl, it means he's serious?"

"It. . . yes, it does. But the Whidock giris . . ."

"Go on."

''They ought not," said the doctor, ''to have been so simple-minded."

"You mean you wouldn't have expected the village convention to hold in their case?"

"I wouldn't. And I didn't. You see, they were different."

'Tell me what they were like."

The doctor frowned. "I don't know how to tell you. They were important here. Their father was an important man. So a young doctor, wanting to get along, naturally went to call there. You see, they were traveled. They seemed elegant and . . . well . . . cosmopolitan. You can see how I missed supposing that frequent calls would mean that I was committing myself."

"Yes, I see," said Duff. "You called on Miss Maud?"

"I called at the house," the doctor said. "Somehow or other, I usually saw Maud. I came to know her better than the others. Of course, Isabel was just a bit young for me. A restless nervous youngster, flying in and out."

"And Gertrude?"

"Oh, Gertrude was the most elegant of the three. The least . . . er . . . approachable. I really don't know what used to become of Gertrude."

"She withdrew, perhaps?"

"Yes, she did, rather."

"It's so often the girls," said Duff, "who decide which sister's property the man is." The doctor looked a little startled. "Miss Maud was attractive?"

The doctor winced. "She was a little less . . . er . .. formidable. Of course one didn't, in those days, think whether the Whitlock girls were attractive or not. They were a kind of social institution. Their house was like court. I wonder if you understand. We used to have rather formal, rather stiff, good times up there. The young men were always awed and being above themselves." The doctor's eyes twinkled behind his spectacles. "Oh, my, how we used to throw in our French phrases. And polish our shoes."

Duff said, "They had prestige. Can you imagine them without it?"

"No," said the doctor, "I can't." He brooded a moment. "The attraction was purely their position, although Stephen," he added thoughtfully, "was jolly."

"And the mother?"

"A little bit queer. A moody woman. A lonely woman. By nature, I mean."

"I see. Is Gertrude totally blind?"

The doctor, surprised, took off his spectacles, glanced aslant their surfaces, and put them back. It was a way he had of countering the unexpected

"Oh, yes," he said finally.

"How did that happen?"

"Her horse ran away with her and threw her from the buggy. Injured her head. Years ago. It was quite tragic. Young Innes was supposed to have been at fault. Everyone felt almost as sorry for him as they did for Gertrude. I know of few events that stirred the village more. Oh, yes, she's blind. What"—the doctor cleared his throat—"makes you ask?"

"Could her sight have returned, if perhaps only partially, in all this time?"

"I don't know. I didn't. . . wasn't capable of attending her. Stephen had specialists from Chicago. Big men. Three or four of them. But surely, if she's not blind, Mr. Duff, she herself would know it"

"Yes."

"But . . ." The doctor stared.

"Tell me, how did Gertrude react to her tragedy?"

"Oh, very nobly. Very nobly. She said she would be no burden. She learned to guide herself around the house. She has always been much admired for the way she took it"

"Ah, yes," said Duff. "She has been vain about that?"

The doctor took his glasses off again. "I suppose you are right," he said, and his voice lost its company manners. It was flat with plain speaking.

"A handicap," mused Duff, "can be a rather wonderful thing. It can dissipate all feelings of inferiority. Handicapped people have a beautiful excuse for failing. That's why so many of them are such great successes. It's not strange how often they go ahead and do the very thing one would say they couldn't do. Why do you suppose a one-armed man will study the piano? I've even heard of a lone-legged dancer. It's because they have no fear of failure. If they fan, everyone will understand. So they don't fail. That's the blessing of a handicap."

"But, of course, it doesn't always improve the character or, by removing fear, let loose the energies. Sometimes tiiere is no original energy. Rather often, I'm afraid, the handicapped person is no saint, either. It depends entirely upon the elements of the character he has to start with. People with sour souls grow more sour. Weak people get lisfless. Or lazy. Sometimes there is vanity. Gertrude seems to have grown vain. That's why she might not care to reveal it if she could now see a Uttle."

"That's a horrible idea," said the doctor distastefully.

But Fred said, "You're darned tooting right, Mr. Duff If Gertrude could see just a little, she'd never let on I'd bet on that."

"I'm terribly afraid," said Dr. Follett sadly, "that it's quite possible."

"When did Miss Isabel lose her arm?"

"Oh, that was not so long ago. When Stephen was killed. In 1925. He and his youngest girl had gone off to Marquette for some reason or other. Coming back they hit a boulder almost head on. He must have been half asleep or he felt suddenly faint. It was a dreadful smash The car turned over and he was crushed. So was Isabel's arm. She was terribly shocked, an invalid for months afterward."

''She used to go off alone with her father?"

"No, not especially. I don't know how she happened to be the only daughter along."

"Stephen was a drinking man?"

"No, not especially, either. But he had been very ill just before that trip. Seriously ill. We thought he wasn't as strong as he believed himself to be, and that's why it happened."

"His illness?"

"I didn't attend him. Intestinal, I think."

"He drove himself? They were alone?"

"Oh, yes, yes. In those days Stephen was an enthusiastic motorist."

"Miss Isabel has an artificial arm. Do you know anything about that?"

"Yes, I do know. I know the make. It's an old one. They do much better now."

"How much use is it to her?"

"None," said Dr. Follett. "It's for looks. Her arm is gone from the shoulder."

"You know that of your own knowledge?"

"Yes, I do."

Duff leaned back and looked dreamy. His long bones were folded in a low chair, and his laiees came high. "Tell me, what difference did the father's death make to the Whitlock household?"

"A tremendous difference. He was the life of it. He held Susan Innes Whitlock and the boy there. When he died, they left. After that the three sisters became more and more isolated. It was Stephen who brought people into that house."

"Any financial difference?"

"Why, not much." The doctor looked surprised. "They were well off. Isabel had every care. Specialists and nurses, just as Gertrude had. There was no difference."

"But the girls had control Was Stephen generous with them while he lived?"

"Oh, very. They had everything. He took them abroad. I know they had allowances."

"Was he strict about the allowances or were they unlimited, in effect?"

"I don't know. I remember the girls talked as if he were strict. We always thought it was a way of boasting."

"It may have been," said Duff. "Yes, Now tell me, when did Maud lose her hearing?"

"Gradually, I believe," the doctor said. "But that was long after I stopped going there, after my marriage."

"After her father's death?"

"I believe so. I'm sure it was gradual."

"No accident or sudden disease?"

"No. Just a gradual loss. I never attended her, of course."

"Then you can't tell me," said Duff, "whether she is totally deaf or simply more or less hard of hearing?"

"I can't," said the doctor.

"Has her voice changed?"

"No."

"It hasn't? I was under the impression that a deaf person's voice came to be a monotone. Because he can't hear himself."

"Her voice is pretty darned monotonous," Fred said. "She croaks."

"Yes, I know," said the doctor impatiently, "but Maud has a . . . er . . . defect. Trouble there, her vocal cords. Her voice has always been rather harsh and deep and monotonous, too."

"How very interesting," murmured Dxiff. "It's a real disability, is it?"

"Oh, yes. I used to try to help her."

"I see," said Duff. "I see."

"Does it run in the family?" asked Fred suddenly.

"Eh?"

"Because Isabel's voice is funny, too."

"Oh, yes, Isabel. A result of her nervous shock. So they say. A slight paralysis there."

"I thought so," said Fred. "She whines, kind of."

"Is there anything the matter with Gertrude's voice?" demanded Duff. He looked alert. He didn't move, but there was a gluiting eagerness in his eye.

"Guess not," said Fred.

"Rather a pleasant voice, in fact," the doctor said with relief, as if it were good to be able to speak admiringly of a Whidock. "Very pleasant. She used to sing a little. I don't suppose she sings any more."

"Never heard her sing out," said Fred, "but her voice is O.K."

Duff bowed his head in thought. He was limp in the chair, and his hands, resting palms down on either chair arm, grasped nothing and did not twitch. Concentration surrounded him like a cloud. He was gone from the doctor's sitting room. He was absent, and it was important not to bring him back. Fred and the doctor felt that. They dared not disturb him. His thinking was a presence in the room and kept them silent.

Finally he looked up and smiled. "I can see Gertrude," he said, "the eldest princess, with her drawing-room accomplishments, her china painting, her singing, her proper elegance. But what did Maud do?"

"Do?" said the doctor. "Why, I don't know that Maud

did any of those things. Maud was . . . well, rather more the hoyden. She had no accomplishments."

"Bet she had a hammock," Fred said.

The doctor looked at him queerly. "Yes," he said.

"And Isabel?"

"Let me see. Isabel was always busy. But I'm sure I can't tell you . . . She collected stamps at one time. It seems to me that she had quick enthusiasms that didn't last."

"Say," said Fred eagerly, "could I ask hun something?"

Duff looked pleased and interested.

"I wondered if Maud's still mad at you," Fred said. "I had a kind of crazy idea that maybe she pushed that lamp over thinking it was you down below. I guess it's crazy, but I wondered, just die same."

The doctor looked distressed. His eyes rolled. "I don't thmk . . ." he began.

Duff said, "No, Fred, she isn't that mad at him. Not any more."

"How do you know?" said a startled Fred.

I>uff's eyes were on the doctor's face. "I daresay she carries on the old antagonism, but not seriously, Fred. A woman isn't angry enough to murder the suitor who jilted her twenty-five years ago."

"Certainly not," said the doctor, gasping.

"Especially since she's . . . er . . . had . . ." Duff stopped.

The doctor said, "Who told you!"

"You did," Duff said, "or at least you confirm my suspicion. As a matter of fact, Fred and Alice told me. Also, Josephine."

The doctor took off his glasses and polished them frantically. "I tell you, Mr. Duff, she said things to me the other night that made me sick to my stomach. Terrible! A terrible woman. Lustful, horrible, disgusting. No moral starch in her."

"I don't care for Maud, myself," murmured Fred, "but for God's sake . . ."

"She taunted me!" the doctor said. "Dear God, as if I cared!"

"Josephine touched her cross," said Duff. "I wonder, do her sisters know?"

Fred looked illuminated, and then grim. "They can smell, can't they?" he said.

The doctor looked greenish-white.

"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Duff," said Fred. "What those two don't want to know, they don't let themselves know they know."

"I think," said Duff, "you've put your finger on it. Yes, I think you have."

"I have!" said Fred, amazed.

A man in the dark clothes of a minister came up the front walk from the gate.

"Here's Foster with a job for me, I suppose," said Dr. Follett. "The Methodist preacher, Mr. Duff. Our only Protestant Church. Wait. I'll... er ... send him away."

Duff rose and stood quite still. "Do the Whidock girls go to church?"

"No, no, but they're members. They used to be. Stephen . . ."

"How I would like to ask that man three rude and prying questions," Duff said, "and I can't."

He stood still, and the doctor bristled. "I think you can." He rose to the challenge in Duff's manner. "He's a friend of mine, and he doesn't gossip. Nether he nor I can afford it. Let me speak to him. I think I can guarantee you your answers."

The doctor bustled importantly to the door and spoke with an air of great confidence to the sad-eyed man in the black suit. Fred would have winked, but Duff was looking with mild pleasure at a flowering tree visible through the window.

. "Dr. Follett tells me you have three questions," said the Reverend Mr. Foster. "Please feel free to ask them. Anything I can do. Of course, there are some secrets . .."

The man of God braced himself.

Duff smiled his charming smile. "My questions aren't too shocking," he said. "This is the first one: Does Miss Gertrude Whitlock contribute generously to the upkeep of your church?"

The minister looked judicious. He smacked his lips. "She contributes regularly," he said, "a sum which seems to me quite proper. Certainly, I appreciate her faithful support, and . . ."

"A gcx)d answer," said Duff warmly. "Now does Miss Maud Whitlock contribute generously, and so forth?"

"Miss Maud has been very generous on occasion," said Mr. Foster, upon taking thought. "She does not contribute regularly, but I have at times mentioned a special need to her and known her to empty her purse. Yes. Why . . ."

"Thank you very much," said Duff with a gleam in his eye. "Does Miss Isabel Whidock, and so forth, and so fordi?"

The minister said stiffy, "She has not contributed since I have been in Ogaunee. Of course, I cannot say what she may or may not . . ."

"You are very kind," said Duff, "and I must keep my word and not keep you. Thank you, doctor, for your help. I am most grateful for it."

The doctor blushed with pleasure. Duff could give pleasure. His thanks were sincere. But the minister looked rather baffled and disappointed. His sad eyes followed them as they left.

"Mrs. Innes's house," Duff said, in the car.

Fred chuckled. ''He coulda gone on."

Duffs eyelids crinkled. "And on," he said. "An articulate man in a small town full of inarticulate people. Poor fellow. Well, he interrupted us, but perhaps to some benefit. We haven't time to wait him out, Fred. We are hot on the trail."

"You don't say," said Fred with delight. "Of what?"

"Lunch," said Duff.

17

Killeen, entering Innes's bedroom, sensed crisis in the air, and he walked softly. "I'm ready now, Innes. Shall I come back later?"

"No," said Innes angrily, "come in now." He looked at Alice and spread a benign smile over his irritation. "Alice has got the colly-wobbles," he said.

Alice faced him with an indignant murmur.

"But I know," said Innes, holding up his hand in a traffic cop's stop gesture, "that no matter what she says, she is a friend of mine."

Alice said, "That's true, of course."

"So she'll do something for me," said Imies, keeping the third person, as if he were talking to a child, "she'll run down and fetch Josephine and Mr. Johnson."

"Of course I will," said Alice, "if you want them. Innes, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to sign my will," he snapped, "and they're going to witness it."

"You can't."

"On the contrary." Innes was cold and his mouth was thin. "You don't seem to realize that your girlish doubts are interfering with a plan for my safety."

"I have no doubts," said Alice, "girlish or otherwise."

"I don't care whether you have or not. I intend to stay alive."

Art Killeen was giving a good imitation of a deaf mute.

"You have my permission," said Alice dryly, "to stay alive."

"We mustn't quarrel," cried Innes, melting suddenly into panic. "Alice, don't you see! Here I am helpless, in bed! And you know what I'm afraid of. I had it all worked out, this scheme. To make it worth their while to protect me. And I'm going on with it. You shan't stop me. You have no right to stop me!"

"Please don't upset yourself," Alice said quietly. "I'm not stopping you."

"Helpless . . . helpless . . ." Innes tossed as much as he was able. "Now . . . now, when I need your support, when I need your loyalty . . . you choose this moment. . ."

Alice picked up the pillbox, shook one out, and put it, with a glass of water, in his hand.

"Don't stew," she said coldly. "It's not disloyal to tell the truth."

"Alice, don't leave me!"

"I think . . ." KiUeen backed toward the door.

"Where are you going? You stay here," Innes commanded. He picked up briskness. "Alice, if you please, at least you can ask Josephine and Mr. Johnson to come up here. If this distresses you so much, remember, I can change my will again."

"I can't stop you from making a will," she said. "Why

can't you put another name in place of mine? Mr. Killeen's, for instance."

Killeen looked startled, and Innes looked stubborn. His hair was mussed, his little mustache out of order. But his eyes shot lightning at her.

"I shall do as I planned. We'll discuss the rest of it later. Please hurry. YouVe delayed this already."

Alice started to leave the room with what meek dignity she could, but she thought of something and turned back.

"You'll stay right here?" she said to Killeen.

AH his bewilderment showed through his mask. "Yes of course."

"He mustn't be left alone."

"I see. I see."

"You'd better stay until Fred comes back," said Alice. "It seems I'm going to have the motive now."

She walked out, leaving their two faces blank with astonishment.

When Fred and Duff came in they found Alice roaming distractedly aroimd the sitting room. "He's signed his will," she annoimced.

"Who's with him?"

"Art ... Mr. Killeen."

"Do they know?"

"Not yet," Alice said. "Look, Fred, I'm sorry, but you're on duty, that is if there is any more guard duty. I can't be."

"Why not?"

"Well, that" she said. "Look at my big expensive motive. Besides, we had a fight. With a witness."

"Are you nuts?" Fred said.

"No. I broke my engagement." She dared him to wonder why.

"Broke the . . . ?"

"May I say, congratulations?" said MacDougal Duff gendy.

Fred said, without smiling, "I hope you'll be very happy."

He marched upstairs without looking back. Alice felt like a child who's been unjustly slapped. She looked around at Mac Duff, whose fine eyes were friendly.

"I've been misunderstood," he said. "It's not a re-boxind, is it?"

Her face cleared. "Oh, no." Then she said, "Oh." Then she blushed. Then she said. "Yes, but how ... ?"

"My dear, I have the advantage of having been at school with the two of you, but that young man who drives for Mr. Whidock is clever enough . .."

"I don't know what you're talking about?" said Alice in a fluster.

"Of course not." Duff was being very placid. "I do that, you know. Speak in riddles every once in a whUe. It builds me up. Forgive me, Alice. Do you still want to know who tried to murder Innes?"

"Of course I do. Mr. Duff, why did you congratulate me?"

"Because I'm old-fashioned," said Duff. "Where are the girls?"

"I don't know." She moved beside him toward the hall. "Did you get any dope at the doctor's?"

"Some, about the past."

"Did it help?"

"It inclines me to wonder," said Duff evasively. "Where shall we find them?"

"In their own rooms, I guess."

"Then let us go to their own rooms. By all means. I want to see them in their lairs. You come along and introduce me. In fact, I want to see their lairs."

"But who are you?" said Alice. She felt suddenly gay.

"I hadn't thought," he said. "Who am I, after all?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. What on earth are you doing here?"

Duff shook his head.

"It won't do," she said.

"I am an historian."

Alice was quick. "Are you interested in old families, by any chance?"

"I dote on them. I'ma friend of yours, too."

"All right. It'll work on Gertrude."

"Well, then where does Gertrude hole up?"

Alice giggled. "She looks as if she lives under a rock," she whispered. "In here. There's a door. I dare you to knock."

"Before we knock," said MacDougal Duff, "let us review our objectives. Now let me see. First, we should like to know where Gertrude was last night and what she knows about where her sisters were. Also we are interested in her sleeves."

"Oh, dear."

"You try the sleeves. After all, she's supposed to be blind. Item two, is she blind? I think you'd better not be surprised at anything I do. Not out loud, anyway."

"I'll be careful."

"But most important, we want to know what Gertrude is. What, from her inside, might impel her to murder? Lines thinks she wants revenge. Fred thinks she wants his money. What does Gertrude want in this world, and how badly?"

"Oh, dear," said Alice.

"And watch the room. Notice. Look around. She lives there if she lives anjrwhere. It may tell us whether or not she can see, and other" things.

"Look sharp, now," said Mac Duff, and he knocked on Gertrude's door.

"Come in," called Gertrude.

Alice opened the door. "Miss Gertrude, this is Alice Brennan. I've brought Mr. Duff to see you. He's a very old friend of mine, a professor of American History, from New York. Staying with Mrs. Innes," she wound up breathlessly. "And he's been so anxious to meet you."

"How do you do, Mr. Duff," said Gertrude in her cool soprano. She inclined her head.

"It's very good of you to see me," said Duff in his quiet voice. "Everywhere I go, I try to talk with members of old and important families. You can understand that, as an historian, I find them fascinating."

Gertrude's face showed a flash of animation.

"Please sit down," she said. "The armchair to the left of my bed, as you are standing. You'll find it comfortable."

Gertrude herself, sat in an ancient rocker, upright, as usual. She wore gray sUk, a grim plain pattern, vastiy unbecoming and marred by a spot or two.

Her room was large and square, almost cubic, it seemed, so high was the ceiling. It was very bare and pain-

fully in order. Her bed wore an old-fashioned white bedspread. The window curtains were white. There was very litde color. Not a great deal of furniture. There were three tables in the big room, and Alice, conning the objects that stood on them, was surprised how few these were. The table near the bed had no lamp. A jug for water and a glass. That was all. The table near the window in the bay had a low bowl with bulbs in it. Narcissus. The table against the wall held a small wooden frame with some yam stretched across it, a device for weaving. It had scarcely been started. There was also a pack of playing cards.

The walls were perfectly bare. There were no pictures, but the conventional mirror was attached to the dresser. There were no books in the room. In the comer stood an old-fashioned phonograph with a crank. No radio. Alice wondered about that. But the radio was the voice of the brawling, tumultuous world; and this bare orderly room was Gertmde's, into which the tumult did not penetrate. Alice thought: I wonder if it gets into her mind. I wonder if she knows there is a war.

It was a sad room, somehow, and Alice looked with some pity at the woman's face.

That all-over straw-colored effect, she thought, would vanish with a little rouge and a lick or two with an eyebrow pencil. But of course not, although, peering closer, Alice thought she detected a streak of face powder. Straw-colored face powder, she supposed to herself, with an inner smUe.

Gertrude was speaking, "My father's forebears come from New England. My mother was of old southem stock, although of a branch that migrated north and west."

She knew her stuff, thought Alice. The delicate disdain with which Gertrude skirted sheer boasting alienated her agam.

Duff knew his stuff, too. He rounded out her picture with knowing murmurs. Through the room paraded the past, full of gallant and blue-blooded people.

Alice got up and tiptoed toward the closet door, which luckily stood open a crack. CJertrnde's sightless face was toward her. She felt conspicuous and exposed. The door swung easily as she touched it. Gertrude's dresses hung in

perfect order on a bar that ran across the closet. Surely, in no other closet did all the dresses face one way. All the left sleeves were toward her. She ran through them quickly. The right sleeves would be more difficult. She would have to burrow. And noiselessly.

Duff was saying, "I wonder if you can describe your father for me, Miss Gertrude? lliat type of man, the aristocratic pioneer, I call him, seems to me to have made a great deal of our history."

"I can see that you are right," agreed Gertrude. "My father was a man of great vigor and ability." Two halves of a buckle clicked as the dresses swayed. Gertrude was rnunediately alert. "Alice . . . ?" she said.

Alice caught her breath. How could she speak from behind Duff, where she shouldn't be? Desperately, she grabbed for the last sleeve to inspect it. She would do her job, anyhow.

Then she took two steps, swiftly, away from the closet. "I thought, perhaps an ash tray," she said.

Duff had a cigarette in his hand, like magic. "I believe I have automatically taken out a cigarette," he said apologetically. "Forgive me, Miss Gertrude? Do you mind smoke?"

"Not at all," said Gertrude graciously. "Alice, dear, you will find an ash tray on the window sill of the bay."

"That green dish?" said Duff.

"A small glass dish," said Gertrude.

"Oh, yes, I have it." Alice brought the dish, which was amber, to Duff, and he reached his hand for it.

"Thank you."

Then her heart jumped. Duff didn't move and he made no sound, but his face contorted with revulsion and horror and surprise. The glass dish in her hand was perfectly clean and empty. She could see that. There was nothing wrong with it. Unless invisible insects wriggled there. Or Duff could see something loathsome under her shaking fingers that were loosening, in spite of her. She nearly dropped it.

Duff's hand went imder the dish. He said, and by a miracle of control, his voice reflected nothing that was in his face, "Do you smoke. Miss Gertrude?"

"Thank you no," said Gertrude. There was no ripple in her. If she could see Duffs face at all, she, too, had

miraculous control not to cry out, "What's the matter?" But she said, "I don't smoke, Mr. Duff. I think, perhaps, because I am blind, you know.''

Duff put the ash tray down on his knee and lit his cigarette. He leaned forward, bringing his face only a few feet from Gertrude Whitlock. "I'm glad you said that," he told her. "One never can be quite sure . . . I've known blind persons who seem offended if their misfortune is mentioned. Why is that. Miss Gertrude? Because they wish to pretend . .. ?"

Gertrude said in her superior way, "I am never offended. After all, to be blind is to be different from people who retain their sight." Her tone came close to suggesting that people often retained their sight through sheer vulgarity. "One can scarcely pretend. There are many difficulties, of course. But I simply resolved that I would not be a burden."

Duffs long face grew roimder in a wide clownish smile. He winked at Alice and made, with his forefinger, the time-honored circular gesture near the head that means "crazy."

Alice knew that if Gertrude could see, she would be driven wild with fury. But Gertrude was not furious. Gertrude went on speaking. "Fortunately," she said, with shrieking modesty, "I am a person of very simple tastes and requirements."

"This is an interesting house," said Duff, dropping his facial monkeyshines and leaning back. "Your father built it?"

"Yes, indeed. We have always lived here, on the hill." Gertrude proceeded to unroll a panoramic view of herself as she saw her. The Whitlocks who lived on the hill, apart, above. The eldest daughter, upon whom the mantle of distinction most surely felL Now a woman of great sensitivity, fine and refined, bearing nobly and even triumphantly her tragic affliction.

Duff said, as if her words had decided him, "Miss Gertrude, I hadn't thought of asking you these questions. But now that I meet you, I feel that you may perhaps be the one best able to answer them for me. I had thought that, because you cannot see, you would not know. But I do believe your perceptions are far more alert and your intelligence more keen . . ." He appeared to stumble. "That is to say, of course, I haven't met your sisters. But. . ."

"What questions do you mean, Mr. Duff?" said Gertrude in a most friendly fashion.

"Well, you see, last night ..."

Gertrude stiffened just a little.

"Young Alice, here, tells me she believes there was an intruder in this house."

"An intruder?" said Gertrude slowly.

"Yes, I do," said Alice truculently. One had to look sharp with this Duff. He gave you a role without warning. Duff's confident smile was sweet praise, though.

"My dear, whatever makes you think . . . ?"

"I had a feeling," Alice said. "I woke up and I felt just as if there was somebody in the hall."

"Where, my dear?"

"In the hall. downstalrs," faltered Alice.

"Your brother is rather concerned about it," Duff put in, "because, of course, that very queer accident with the furnace has made him quite imeasy, and he wonders if someone has a way of getting in here, if you are safe."

"Safe?" said Gertrude. "Of course we are safe. You must have misunderstood Innes, Mr. Duff. I doubt if my half-brother is thinking of our safety."

"Indeed?" murmured Duff.'

"He has less family feeling than you think. I am afraid that he considers us three insignificant old women." She held her head higher, if possible. "That is quite natural, and I do understand it. Why, Mr. Duff, perhaps we are."

Somebody had to say, "Oh, no!" in a shocked voice, and somebody was Alice who found herself reacting as required. Gertrude smiled. "But an intruder, dear . . ."

"My dear Miss Gertrude," said Duff, "you fail to realize that if there is a thief in Ogaunee, this house would attract him." Gertrude seemed pleased. Her long narrow teeth showed in another smile. "Now, I am wondering if your very keen ears might not have noticed something."

Gertrude appeared to cast her mind back. "I retired to this room early. Quite early. Immediately after bidding Innes good night. I remember nothing out of the ordinary. I heard the telephone bell, of course, and Isabel answering it She came in to me, right afterward."

"At what time was this, Miss Gertrude, do you know?"

"I really caimot tell you," said Gertrude. "My own watch is, unfortunately, out of order."

"Your own watch has no crystal," said Duff.

"I read it with my fingers," said Gertrude majestically. "Why do you wish to know the time, Mr. Duff? I believe it was raining. I believe we spoke of the storm."

"Had it been raining long?"

"I am very sensitive to a storm," said Gertrude. "I have learned to disregard them. I have taught myself a certain amount of inattention."

"How wise," Duff murmured. "You see, I was thinking that no intruder could have been moving about the house while your sister was still . . . er . . . downstairs. But you heard nothing then. Or later?"

"Isabel went upstairs to her own room when she left me. I heard nothing after that Nothing at all, that I remember, until people began to shout and bang."

"I wonder if Miss Isabel heard something before she went upstairs."

"She would have told me," said Gertrude a little petulantly.

"Not necessarily," said Duff gently. "I wondered if she did not look in to see if you were all right, not caring to worry you . . ."

"Isabel would find it very difficult to deceive me," said Gertrude haughtily. "If she had been worried about me, I should have known it. She came in because she wanted witch hazel on her ... her injury."

"I don't imderstand," said Duff.

"My sister is rather helpless," said Gertrude. "She had bruised her . . . her limb."

"I don't imderstand," said Duff again, sounding lost in bewilderment.

"I applied the witch hazel," said Gertrude. "I have two hands. She came in with the botde and the cotton, but she finds it very difficult to manage. So often other people have to do the simplest things for Isabel."

Duff said, "Miss Gerttude, I am afraid I am being utterly stupid, but I seem to have quite lost the thread of what you are saying. Your sister had hurt herself?"

"Yes, days ago."

"I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I see now. Your sister came to you for help. Of course. And you very kindly did help her. You dabbed the witch hazel on her arm."

"It was not her arm," said Gertrude severely. "Really, Mr. Duff . . ."

"Forgive me," said Duff quickly. "I am struggling with a reversal of feeling. You see, I had been thinking of your sister taking care of you. I find, instead, that you, in the goodness of your heart and the fortitude of your spirit, are, instead, the one to whom she appeals."

Gertrude never winced, though Alice did. It was so sticky and so thick. Gertrude said, "It was nothing." But she didn't mean it

Duff bit his lip and cast a look at Alice. "Another question," he said humbly. "When you were out of doors, just before Mr. Whitlock and Miss Brennan and the chauffeur set forth in the car, do you remember ... ?"

"Yes," said Gertrude. "I had stepped out for a breath of air."

"You heard no stranger?"

"No," she said, puzzled. "Why?"

"Perhaps there was no stranger," said Duff soothingly. "Your brother is unwell and nervous, of course." He rose. "I hope," he said, "that I may come in and chat with you another time."

"Please do," said Gertrude cordially.

Duff drifted across to the table where the weaving lay. "You are doing some charming work," he said.

"My weaving?"

"Yes. Lovely."

"K you will hand it to me, Alice dear, perhaps I shall do a litde now."

Alice gave her the frame and the wool. They went away, leaving Gertrude upright in the rocker, her thin hands busy with the work, the very portrait of saintly patience.

Duff said, "Well? The sleeves?"

"They were all right," said Alice.

"None recently washed?"

"They were all silk. And not wrinkled. And pretty clean."

"The only hope was that she might have stained her sleeve and not known it."

"It's no help, though, is it?"

"Is she blind, Alice?"

"There's only one thing," said Alice slowly.

"Yes?"

"Those playing cards."

"I managed to look. They are special cards with tiny raised dots in the comers. For the blind."

"Oh. Well, what about the flowers?"

"Narcissus," said Duff. "Very fragrant"

Alice sighed. "And the mirror?"

"There's always a mirror."

"Then you think she's blind?"

"It does seem so," said Duff. "That's a monstrous woman, Alice."

They were m the hall, and Art Killeen came down the stairs.

"I'm off to the post office," he said.

"With the new will?"

"Yes. Innes wants it safely away. He is going to announce what he's done, as soon as it's safe with Uncle Sam."

"I see," said Duff.

"Want to help me find the post office, Alice?"

"I can't," she said. "Mr. Duff and I . . ."

"I'd like to talk to you," said Art Killeen wistfully. "For just a minute. Do you mind if I keep her just a minute, Mr. Duff?"

Duff drifted down the hall as if something were drawing him toward the kitchen.

Alice said sharply, "I won't be long."

Duff flapped his hand at her and disappeared.

18

"I'm not going to the post office. Art. No, really. What did you want to say?"

He drew her into the sitting room with an arm across her shoulders. "I don't know how I'm going to say it, exactly," he confessed. He turned her so that she faced him. "Darling, you've put Innes in a state. Fve tried to be helpful."

"What do you mean?" Alice felt choked and angry. She wanted to reject his help, whatever it was.

"You're going to marry him, aren't you?"

"That's up to him," she said bitterly.

"He'll be all right." Killeen spoke with a soft confidence.

Alice shook herself away from him. "I don't know why you think you've got to interfere."

"Interfere? Darling, I'm not. I'm helping."

"Helping what?"

"To clear up a misunderstanding," said Killeen, "between you and Innes." She was speechless, and he went on. "Really, darling, I think you ought to be less hostile. It's costing me something."

"Oh?" said Alice.

"I'm a little jealous," he said.

Alice felt as if firecrackers were going off in the black back of her eyes, but she managed to laugh.

"You may laugh," said Art Killeen, "but you're darned sweet, Alice. I told him he was a lucky man."

"What else did you tell him?" said Alice with an effort She wasn't angry any more.

"I convinced him that you meant the opposite of what you said."

'That was clever." Her voice shook a little.

"You said you were after his dough, darling, but actions speak louder than words, as I pointed out"

"What actions?"

"You can't be after the dough, sweet Alice. You didn't want him to sign that wilL"

"But . . ."

"He sees that, now."

"Maybe I don't understand myself," said Alice. As a matter of fact, she did feel all confused.

"I understand you, darling."

Alice caught a glimpse of a scheme of things in which wheels went around within wheels, and one seemed mercenary for the purpose of seeming unmercenary, though on the next layer down . ..

"Besides that," said Killeen, "I had to convince him that you weren't in love with me."

"Did he think ... I was?"

"I'm afraid he did there for a minute."

"Wasn't that bright of Innes?" she said flatly and openly.

He chose to take it for sarcasm. "Quite a brainstorm," he said.

"As if there was any percentage," Alice heard herself saying coolly, "in that."

His eye leaped to hers. She saw him come up to the very brink of an impulse, felt the surge of recklessness that almost carried him away. She saw it fail, too, come to the brink and not go over.

"I wanted to tell you," he said lamely, "but now I'd better get down to the post office. Innes would have a fit if he could see me dawdling."

'Then don't dawdle," she said.

He came rather near. "I hope everything is going to be all right," he said, with warmth left out of the wish.

"Do you, by any chance, mean the opposite of what you say?" asked Alice.

Light leaped in his eye. He bent and kissed her and made his exit without a curtain line.

A curious mmibness took hold of Alice. She didn't seem to be able to go over that little scene and analyze it. Her mind wanted to put it off. She had, besides, a sense of having been interrupted. There was something she had been in the middle of doing. Something absorbing. Mr. Duff.

It's that Indian! she thought. What's Duff saying to that Indian, I wonder.

Through the kitchen window she saw Duff and Mr. Johnson sitting on the back steps, side by side. Their eyes were fixed on the horizon. No duel this time. They gazed across the pit to the hills and distant trees. Mr. Johnson spat in the dust from time to time. Duff seemed to dream in the sun.

"I went down to the reservation yesterday," he said lazily.

Mr. Johnson grunted.

"Ever stay there?"

"Naw."

"What do you think of them?"

Mr. Johnson grinned and spat.

Duff said, "By the way, are you a Christian?''

"Sure," said Mr. Johnson. "You?"

"I am," said Duff, suppressing a sense of outrage. "Some of the Oneidas down there stick to the old religion, they tell me."

"The old man gimme a dollar."

"That so?" said Duff cautiously.

"Yeah." Mr. Johnson spat "To get baptized."

"The old man. That would be Stephen?"

"He's dead."

The dialogue seemed to have come to a dead end

"Go to school, did you?" ventured Duff.

"Sure."

"Where?"

"Here."

"How long?"

Mr. Johnson moved his shoulders. "The old man gimme a dollar to spht half a cord of wood. So I quit."

"What," said Duff rather desperately, "did you want to be?"

"Huh?"

"I mean when you were a kid." No answer. "For instance, didn't you ever want to drive the engine?"

'The train engine?" Duff nodded. "Naw," said Mr. Johnson.

"I guess you'd just as soon have a lot of money," said Duff artfully.

"What for?"

"To spend."

"Naw. I mean what for?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Wadd'ya want me to do?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"Thought you had a job," said Mr. Johnson.

"Would you kill somebody if I paid you for it?"

Mr. Johnson's dark face didn't change. "Who?"

"Anybody."

"Innes, hey?"

Duff looked at him. "What makes you say that?"

134

Mr. Johnson scratched himself. "That's whatcha want to know," he stated.

Duff admitted "Yes. Well?"

"What's tlie matter with Innes?" said Mr. Johnson. "He gimme a dollar."

"Suppose somebody gave you more than that?"

Duff searched the brown face. It was expressionless. "Listen," said Mr. Johnson, "do it yourself."

Alice stifled a giggle. Duff turned and saw her. He got up and jouied her in the kitchen.

"How's the poor Indian?" she whispered.

"Lo," said Duff ruefully, "now, I think he's kidding me."

They went toward the front of the house together. Alice looked up at Duffs face and caught him with the feathers of his spirit ruffled. "Is he super-naive or is he super-subtle? Alice, he's got the Indian sign on me."

"Well, I don't believe it," said Alice stoudy. "What shall we do now?"

"Shall we beard Maud?"

"One could," giggled Alice. "But I won't be able to search her closet right under her eyes."

"No. By the way, how does one communicate with her?"

"Can you talk on your fingers?''

"No. You must be my secretary."

"Are you going to try any tricks?"

"Oh, certainly."

"All right," said Alice. "Oh, don't tell me, let me guess. It's great sport, not knowing what you're going to do next."

"Did I give you an A?" asked DufL "I should have. Forward."

Outside Maud's door, Alice said, "I don't know what we're supposed to do. She wouldn't hear a knock."

"Open it and look in," suggested Duff. "If she isn't decent, you can warn me and we'U go away."

Alice turned the knob and the door moved. She looked in almost fearfully. The room was empty.

"Nobody."

"Go ahead," said Duff. "Quick."

When they were inside Duff said, "Sit down and beginto write a note, explaining that we called, anything . . ."

Alice saw one of Maud's pads and found a pencil in her pocket. She could see, out of the comer of her eye. Duff in the closet.

"Dear Miss Maud: I brought Mr. Duff here to see you but you were out" How silly I "When you find this will you please . . .'' Please what?

"She's coming!"

Duff seemed to conjure himself across the room, so quickly was he there, standing Innocendy and rather languidly at her side.

Maud came in pell-mell The doorknob struck the wall as she flung the door open. She stopped when she saw them.

"Hello. What are you doing in here? Hey?"

Alice rose and smiled and handed her the unfinished note. She motioned toward Duff. Duff bowed. Alice felt she ought to cmtsy. It seemed a long time that they bowed and bobbed their heaxls, before Maud's eyes went down to the writing.

"Name's Duff, ehr' she said. "How ja do. Sit down if you want to. What's up?"

Duff said to Alice, "Write that I wanted to meet her because I am interested in the early history of Ogaunee."

Ahce wrote.

Meanwhile, Maud said, "I know who you are now. You're the fella that's staying down at Susan's."

She plunged herself down in a low chair beside the fireplace, imfolded a paper napkin she had in her hand, revealing a pUe of five or six pieces of Melba toast.

"Isabel says I've got to reduce," she cackled. "Can you tie that?"

Alice handed her the note.

"What do you mean, early history?" the woman demanded in a flash. "How old do you think I am?"

"I'm sorry," said Duff.

Maud guffawed. "I don't know anything about all that stuff. You ask GerL She can talk."

"He did," wrote Alice.

"Talked your ear off, I'll bet," Maud said.

She crunched into the toast Alice looked around the room for the first time. It was a mess. Things were piled around in a disorder so thorough as to seem maxl. Cardboard boxes and paper-wrapped packages, some half-opened, stood on the seats of chairs. Three pairs of shoes and an uneven number of varicolored stockings lay helter skelter under the bed on a floor thick with dust The bed itself wore its spread askew, and there were four pillows.

The mantel held three cracker boxes, unclosed, an empty Coca-Cola botde and an imwa&hed glass. The grate was full of trash, mcluding orange peel dry and stiff with age. The ruffled curtains at the windows were fairly clean, but the tie-back was gone from one of them and it sagged from the rod. Its ruffle drooped. A pint milk bottle stood on another sill, and the comic section of an old newspaper had been stuffed haphazardly in the crack at the side of the lower pane.

An apple core lay near a dirty hairbrush on the dresser, and hairpins mixed with face powder in the pin tray. Alice shuddered. Sound, she thought. Something to hear. She looked for an alarm clock. There was a clock on the dresser, but it had no hand to set for any alarm. No phonograph here. A pile of magazines, three novels with a pair of lovers embracing each other on each jacket, pictures. A calendar print of "The Horsefair" with a mustache penciled on one of the horses! The mirror was smudged and streaked and reflected crookedly, as if the composition of the glass was muddled.

Meanwhile, Maud hooked with her toe a footstool with a tapestry cover that was frayed and soiled, and put her feet up on it. She was watching them rather maliciously. Alice bit her Up. The atmosphere in this room reeked of Maud.

"Write," said Duff, "that you thought you heard somebody in the house last night. Ask if tiiere's room for me to stay here. Say you think there ought to be another mail."

Alice wrote.

Maud spoke. She knew perfectly well that something was being prepared for her to consider, but she chose to speak and upset the order of communications. "What do you want to know about early history?"

Now Alice's note was irrelevant. "This is the devil of an interview," said Duff. "Show it to her."

"No room," croaked Maud, having read. "What do you mean, another man? There's three abeady. If you count Innes. Two and a half, say." She roared.

Alice looked helpless. Maud stopped laughing and took another piece of Melba toast.

"She won't take the bait, will she?" said Duff without moving his lips much, though his voice was clear and penetrating. "Stubborn old owl, I'd say."

Maud chewed on.

Duff's voice dropped to a near whisper. "Shall we tell her?"

"What?" whispered Alice.

Maud's finger investigated a tooth.

"About the telephone call in the night," Duff said very quiedy.

Maud's light-colored eyes rested vacantly on the wall.

"I don't know." Alice tried to think up some embroidery of her own. "Do you think it's safe?"

Duff said, "Write and ask her if she knows anything about what happened last night."

Maud said, in the middle of his last word, "Say, nobody was in this house last night, were they?"

"Write, yes, you think so. Write that Innes thinks so."

Maud snorted as she read. "Innes is a fraidy cat, always was. Jump at his shadow."

Alice wrote, "Did you see or hear anything?"

"Well, I was reading a book. Ehdn't see anything. Can't hear, you know. Rained, though, didn't it? Lemme see. Isabel went through."

"Isabel!" Duff looked at a door m the far wall. "That communicates with Isabel's room?"

"It must, I guess," said Alice. "We didn't know that, did we?"

"I must have the time. Isabel was the last one to be out of her room. She answered the phone. Ask her the time."

"The time? But Gertrude says she went upstairs right after being in to see her, so we know the time, don't we?"

"Do we?" said Duff.

"Of course. If Susan knows what time she called up."

"She says she called about eleven."

"Well, tiien, Isabel came upstairs just after eleven. That would be just before Fred left Innes's room. Or just after.

If she came through this way he wouldn't have seen her. It must have been about then."

"Ask Maud," said Duff.

"She won't know," said Alice. "Why should she care what time it is. Look at her."

Maud lay in her chair as if it were a hammock. Her feet fell sidewise balanced on their heels, the two of them looking like a flipper at the end of her legs. She was frankly appraising Alice's clothes and figure. Or seemed to be.

"But ask her," said Duff. "And ask her which way Isabel went through."

Maud sent them a suspicious glance before she read the newest note. "Say, what is all this? Isabel was coming up. She didn't want to go past the boy in the hall. She had her kimono on."

"What time?" said Duff with his lips. He tapped his wrist watch.

"Eh? What time, you mean? Oh, about eleven," said Maud sullenly.

Duff looked at the clock which stood behind Maud on the dresser. He compared it with his own watch. "Ask her how late she was awake. Did Isabel go through here again?"

"She did not," said Maud crossly. "Say, look, who told you to ask questions?"

Duff seized the pad and wrote himself. "Why were you outdoors about eight o'clock, night before last?"

Maud took the pad and grinned evilly. "Innes's puking all over the place nearly made me throw up myself. What of it? Listen, Innes has got some bee m his bonnet What does he think I was doing outside? What the hell difference does it make what time Isabel went to bed last night or me or Gert, either? What's the matter with Innes? Does he think one of us is trying to murder him?"

Alice gasped.

Duff met Maud's bright eyes. He nodded his head. "Yes, he does," he said with his nps.

"What for?" said Maud. She looked interested. Her fat little body became more alert, less limp.

Duff took the pad. "It seems quite certain that someone did try," he wrote. And added, "Mr. Johnson?" with a big question mark.

Maud read it and began to laugh. "You're crazy," she said with rude conviction. "You go tell Innes he's crazy as a bedbug. Say, why should we kill the goose that lays the golden cggl Hey?"

'To get the golden egg," said Duff clearly.

Maud's eyes narrowed. "Aw, life's too short," she said. "You tell him."

She bit into her toast, and Isabel came in at the door without knocking.

19

"Oh, there you are," said Isabel.

Alice and Mr. Duff rose politely. "Miss Isabel, this is Professor Duff. He's an old friend of mine. He . . ."

"How do you do?" said IsabeL Her lips made a semicircle.

Her sharp chin tilted. The eyes were arch.

Alice opened her mouth to explain further, but Isabel did the brushing-off trick. Her eyes wavered away from Duff as if her mind was too busy to consider him. "Innes wants us all to come to his room." She spoke on the fingers of her small left hand. Maud grunted and began to struggle in her chair.

"I can wait, perhaps," said Duff swiftly.

"Perhaps he means you, too," said Alice. She didn't know what Duff wanted.

"I really don't know," said Isabel, complaining of her own uncertainty. Her hand gathered her dress in folds at her bosom. She held her head sidewise, as if she had been interrupted in the act of tossing it. Her strange eyes watched Duff and yet did not watch him. "He mentioned Alice. But he did not mention you, Mr. Duff." Her manner was a bright rebuff.

"Fella's been asking questions," said Maud. "Say!"

The way Isabel's old-fashioned coiffure tilted as she moved her head, and her smile cut across her face, had a quaUty of Victorian gaiety or coquetry about it

Duff said, "Yes, a question or two. What time did the telephone ring last night. Miss Isabel?"

Isabel said, "Why, really, I don't think I can tell you.

Innes is ill, you know. Poor boy. We humor him,. 11 you will excuse us?"

"I shall be happy to wait downstairs," Duff said. "But perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me where I can wash?"

The meaty color of Isabel's jowls brightened. Perhaps she blushed. She turned, and they all went out into the hall. Alice showed Duff the bathroom door.

Alice said, "If Innes does want you, shall I call?"

"Please," he said. Something in the quality of his tone told her that he would just as soon be left out of this conference. She understood. He woiild be looking at Isabel's sleeves.

The fat was in the fire anyway. Surely it wouldn't take Maud long to broadcast Innes's suspicions. But Maud waddled into Papa's room without any more talk.

Innes was enthroned on pillows. He looked around at his assembled audience. His three sisters in a row. His henchmen, Fred and Killeen, on either hand. Alice, seated docilely at his left.

"Take down what I say, please, Alice. You can type it out for Maud. Use Killeen's portable." Innes had an air of having thought of everything.

"Very well," said Alice.

"Now, Gertrude, Maud, Isabel, I want you to know that I have arranged to send each of you a certain amount of money every month." Innes looked terribly pompous. Someone had combed his hair, and his mustache was smooth again. He was full of confidence.

"What's he say?" said Maud. "Oh, she's writing it down, is she?" Maud picked her front teeth with her fingernail. But she kept her shrewd eyes on Innes's face. Lip reading? Alice wondered.

"I am doing this because I have changed my will, and I think it is therefore only fair to make it up to you while I am still alive." Innes was being wily. Smooth. How much of this was Killeen's touch? To seem, and not to seem . .. "I am leaving my estate to Alice, of course."

"What? All?" said Isabel. The two syllables came out without any inflection, abruptly. Gertrude's Hps jerked, but she said nothing. Maud looked at the tip of her finger and put it back into her mouth.

''It may seem strange," Imies went on, "but it really isn't. She's yooing, you see. And I, myself, am younger than any of you. Therefore, your share in my estate is of pretty doubtful value to you, since it is likely that I shall survive you. But"—Innes waved his pudgy hand—''let's not speak of such unpleasant things." He smiled fatuously. "I do feel I've been selfish. I have complained about straightening out your affairs from time to time. But after all, lying here, I began to say to myself that you are my family, and I do have a responsibility in your support and comfort. You are," said Innes sentimentally, "my sisters."

"Therefore, as I say I have arranged for these allowances. They are generous, I thiok. I am dividing ten thousand a year among you. With your own holdings, you will be well off."

Innes paused for applause. There was none. The sisters sat in stony silence.

"Let me tell you just what I have done in my will." Killeen handed Innes" a docmnent. "This is a copy," said Innes airily, but the warning was clear. "Mr. Killeen has mailed the signed original back to his office in the city. Now, of course, I have a few charities here. Erhem, the entire residue goes to Alice Brennan." He tossed a forgiving smile at Alice, hurried his eyes back to the paper and kept them there. "At my death, the allowances I have fixed on you will naturally stop. But I have stated here in the will that Alice Brennan, designated herein as heiress to the bulk of my estate, is hereby eamestiy requested to use her own judgment as to whether she wishes to continue them in whole, in part, or at all. Do you," said Innes, putting the paper down, "understand?"

"My dear Innes," said Gertrude, "isn't that rather peculiar? After all, while we hope to become better acquainted with your charming Alice . . ."

Isabel said, "I'm afraid I don't understand, either." Her forehead wore a frown, not so much of disapproval as of anxious stupidity.

"Surely you can see why I had to do that!" said Innes, raising his eyebrows. "My dears, who knows what is going to happen to my money? The whole world is aflame." Innes dramatized it. "Why, by the time I die, the estate may have shrunk to almost nothing."

Alice thought: He doesn't really believe it. He's too smug. Neither did Killeen believe it. He caught Alice's eye and smiled at her.

"Now," said Innes with false patience, "I can't obligate Alice to continue a rather large allowance regardless of what proportion it turns out to be of her own income. So you see, it's merely fair."

He folded the paper and waited for the reaction.

Isabel's eyes sUd sidewise in the evasive way she had. "Is that all, then, Innes?" she said, plaintively, as if it hadn't amounted to much. "I do have some things to attend to."

BUked of a sensation, Innes said sulkily, "That's all."

Gertrude rose and said the proper thing, gracefully. "We do thank you, Innes. Of course. You are very good. We shall have no financial worries any more." Her affected voice was sweet "I think you are very good to work this all out while you are so ill." Her voice faded. She moved away.

Maud grunted, heaving herself up. She waddled over and peered at Alice's notes over her shrinking shoulder. "Some hieroglyphics," she said cheerfully. "Eton't make any sense to me."

"You'll understand . . ." began Alice.

Maud yawned. But her eyes glittered. She'd understood enough to be curious. Or she'd heard it all, and imder-stood plenty.

MacDougal Duff, meanwhile, went quietly into Isabel's room. It, too was large, an oblong ratiier than a square, with a mantel corresponding to the one in the sitting „ room below. He did not make for the clothes closet immediately. He stood just within the door and looked around,

Isabel's room was crowded. Furniture Uned the walls almost solidly. It looked more like a shop than a place to live. One had to thread one's way through aislelike spaces. There were also many shelves, and each shelf was full. Duff pulled at his chin. He opened a drawer. The drawer was full almost to overflowing. A search here would be quite a chore. There were quantities of things, all sorts of things, clothing, china, bric-a-brac, boxes, bottles, shawls, laces.

Duff shook his head and moved toward the closet. The door burst open. It was stuffed with clothes. He examined the sleeves of all the dresses hanging there, working rapidly. Nothing significant appeared. He hesitated over the dresser drawers, then glanced quickly into each, finding no outer garments, but heaps of silk lingerie, scarves, handkerchiefs, handbags, some of them well worn, and a box full of keys. He pulled open the top of a cedar chest. It smelled violently of antimoth flakes. Woolens in there.

For all its multitude of things, this room had order. He saw that things were classified, not piled helter skelter. These shelves in the comer held vases and china boxes. The shelves beyond the mantel held books and magazines. The chest beside the bed was full of linens. The chest beneath the window was for blankets and blankets only. If a stained sleeve was in this room, it was hidden.

Duff sighed. He opened the door to the hall a crack. The conference was stiU in session. He went to work with furious and perfectly methodical speed, then. Every drawer, every cupboard, the bed, the mattress, got a lightning glance. With utter concentration and not one wasted second glance, he searched the room.

There was no garment with a stained sleeve. Nor any sleeve that seemed to have been secretly washed. No signs at all.

Duff finished. He paused for just a moment over the book shelves. Harold McGrath. George Barr McCutch-eon, E. P. Roe. He ran his finger down the back of a pile of magazines. The complete issues, dating from 1939.

Duff went out of Isabel's room and wandered downstairs.

Mr. Johnson, the Indian, was brushing the stair carpet with a whiskbroom. When Duff stopped a step above, he looked up.

Dufff was out of tricks. He said rather humbly, "I want to ask another question."

"Sure," said Mr. Johnson pleasantly.

"Did you see anyone leave this house, evening before last, between, say a quarter of eight and a quarter of nine?"

"Just Josephine," said Mr. Johnson.

"You saw her?"

"I give a yell and she came out."

"To the bam?"

"Sure."

"Why?"

"I ripped my pants."

"Oh?"

Mr. Johnson began to wield the broom.

"Why did Josephine come out to the bam?" asked Duff patiently.

"I give a yell."

"Yes, but . . ."

"She hadda go down and get these here."

"What?" Duff clutched the banister. "Where?"

'To my bmdder's."

''And you .. . stayed in the bam while she was gone?"

"Sure," said Mr. Johnson. "I didn't have no pants."

"She brought these back to you?"

"That's right."

"You were marooned in the bam, without your . . ."

"I was nekkid," said Mr. Johnson. "Got a hole in my underwear, too."

"Why didn't you tell me!"

"What do you care!" said Mr. Johnson, as close as he ever came to astonishment.

"It makes a difference," fumed Duff. "Don't you see?"

"What the hell difference does it make, so long as I got a pair of pants on?"

"What?"

"I say, what's the difference if I gotta hole," shouted Mr. Johnson. "It's spring, aint it? I'm gointa leave off my imderwear in another month!"

Duff stared at him.

The Indian took up the whiskbroom and began to brush the steps, muttering.

Duff went down and sat beside the window in the sitting room and fell into brooding silence.

Alice came tripping in, carrying the portable typewriter. He lifted an eyebrow. "You wait," she said grimly. She began to type.

Isabel came in sidewise, in her diffident manner. "Oh, Mr. Duff," she said, "you are still here? How nice of you to wait." Was this a touch of malice? "Gertmde begs me

to ask you for dinner. Will you stay?"

Duff smiled. "I should be very happy to stay," he said. "Thank you. Miss Gertrude has been very kind."

But Isabel looked amdous. "Alice ... I beg your pardon, my dear. Do I interrupt?" She put her claw on Alice's shoulder, and Alice turned her face, her fingers still. "Alice, dear, has the doctor been here today?"

"Not since this morning."

"Is he coming?"

"I don't know."

"Innes worries me," said Isabel. "He does, really. Don't you think his manner is rather strange?"

"Mr. Whitlock has a nervous temperament," suggested Duff.

"Yes," said Isabel, "yes, he has."

"He thinks the house was entered last night," said Duff. "I wonder . . ."

Isabel said, "Tramps are on the decrease, don't you find? My mother often used to feed them at the kitchen door."

"Indeed?" Duff followed her willingly. "Your mother was both generous and imafraid, then?"

But Isabel was like a bird. You thought you had salt on her tall and she swooped away. "It does harm," she said. "Alice, dear, I think perhaps you are working too hard. The strain . . ."

Gertrude spoke from the arch. "Alice, dear," she echoed, "Innes is asking for you. He says it is time for his medicine. He seems very restless. Poor Innes."

"Oh, gosh," said Alice. The pillbox was in her pocket. "Ill be right up. In just a minute."

"I wonder," said Isabel, "whether we ought to have Dr. Gunderson? Or perhaps a nurse? What do you think, Gertrude?"

"It doesn't seem necessary," said Gertrude coldly.

Maud barged in behind her. "Alice, Innes wants to know what the heck you did with his pills."

"I have them," said Alice. "Fll be right there." She began to type again.

The three sisters stood ia the room, oddly indecisive. Their presence irritated Alice.

"He can't have a pill, anyhow," she said over her shoul-

der. 'The doctor changed the interval. It's too soon. Til tell him."

Gertrude sighed. "Mr. Duff?" she said.

"Yes, Miss Gertrude."

"Shall we see you at dinner?"

"Yes, indeed. Thank you."

"That will be very pleasant," she said graciously, and withdrew, making for tiie parlor.

Alice ripped out the sheet of paper, separated the copy, and handed the original to Maud.

Maud grinned. She held it carelessly and trundled off toward the kitchen.

Isabel said, "I think . . ." She hesitated. "Will you excuse me? I have some things to attend to." She swooped away.

Alice and Duff were alone. She handed him the carbon copy of her work.

"He's fixed it," she said, still grim. "You see if he hasn't."

20

At five o'clock that afternoon, Fred pulled the big car up by the side of a dirt road, in a pleasant spot, where woods grew up a little slope at their right, and the road fell away before them down a hill and bent along the course of a brook. The silence was perfumed with pine and the smell of warm dust. There was no traffic. There was peace.

Alice leaned back on the cushions beside Duff and sighed, "I wish we'd brought a picnic."

Fred squirmed around to face them over the top of the front seat. "We've been gone nearly an hour. Is it all right to stay away so long?"

"He ought to be safe," said Duff cheerfully. "Killeen's there and Susan's there. The will's signed and the will's gone. And Alice is here with the pillbox."

"The pillbox," said Alice, wonderingly.

"We won't start with that," said Duff, "but we'll get to it." He passed cigarettes and stretched out his long legs. "Well, no soap on the telephone call. The telegraph office sent my wire up to Susan by somebody who happened to

be going that way. He doesn't know, they don't know, what time it got to her. Late, says they. Susan, the source of our impression that the call was maJde around eleven, is frank to say that she is by no means sure. It was raining, she thinks. The rain fell from eleven on. The tele' phone company doesn't take kindly to looking up their records, which rather leads me to believe that their records aren't so very complete. They say they'll try. But they can't tell me, right now, when that call was made. And you kids, right there La the house, never heard it at all."

"We can't help it," said Alice. "We just didn't"

"Why didn't you, I wonder?"

Fred said, "Ilie only thing I can say is that the phone sounds pretty dim when you're in Innes's room with the door closed. And aroimd eleven o'clock ... uh ... we were both in the closet, it so happens."

"That's right, we were," said Alice, very solemnly, because she wanted ta smile.

"Another thing," Fred went on. "If the water is running in the bathroom right next to the backstairs there, I guess I couldn't hear any bell. Well, it was running about eleven ten."

Alice said, "That was me."

"And then again, I was in there myself about twelve o'clock," said Fred, matter-of-fact.

"Thanks," said Duff. "It's a pleasure to listen to intelligent people. But do you know, I don't think we're going to find out exactly when that phone rang."

"Why does it matter so much?"

"Perhaps it doesn't," said Duff placidly. "After all, if we can't prove it rang at eleven o'clock or nearly, neither can we prove that it didn't. I mean, vice versa, of course."

Alice and Fred looked bewildered.

"So we'll build up what we know, doing without the one little fact it seems we can't have. Settle down, you kids, and breathe the nice fresh air. I'ingoing to talk for quite a while."

Having made this statement, he said nothing. The was good. They were far, far away from the Whitloc! house, and peace settied cozily around them. Alice relaxed. She was glad that Innes had insisted tliat Art Killeen

stay at the house. It's better, she thought, with just us. Duff was the most peaceful man in the world, and one needn't strain oneself with Fred, of course. She smiled lazily at Fred, who took off his cap and put his feet up.

"If you're sure Innes is O.K.," he murmured.

"Oh, Inues has fixed that," said Alice sleepily.

"I'll be goldamed if I'd have bought them off," said Fred. "He let them get away with it. He appeased them, that's what he did."

"He didn't want to die."

"Nuts," said Fred. "So nobody wants to die." He muttered something under his breath.

"No isolationist, he," said Duff suddenly. He jerked his thumb at Fred, and Alice giggled. Fred ruffled up his hair with his fine hand and grinned sheepishly.

"This is a nasty murder," said Duff. "This murder that hasn't happened yet. Does it strike you that all these attempts have been singularly slipshod? A lamp falls over. It might hit the right victim. It might not. It didn't hit anyone, but it was a very careless business."

"Yeah," said Fred, half-kidding, "the murderess certainly shoulda been more careful."

"The detour sign moved," went on Duff. "What a haphazard device that was! How easy it would have been for a strange car, a car full of innocent, unknown people, to have gone over into that pit and been killed. How uncertain a method it was of getting the right parties."

"Which was us," Fred grimaced. "But I see what you mean."

"It's almost as if the murderer's right hand doesn't know what his left is doing," mused Duff. "Like the veal in the meat loaf. Less crime than carelessness. Criminal carelessness. One could say one hadn't thought. A kind of unconscious murder."

"The dampers turned wasn't so darned unconscious." "Who can say?" said Duff. "A woman doesn't understand a furnace. Or so she tells herself. She will make it nice and warm for Innes. She will put plenty of coal on. She doesn't understand dampers and drafts. She closes it up, with the very best intentions."

"You mean that? You think it was a mistake?" "It was no mistake," Duff said, "but a person skilled at deceiving herself could have done the murder and looked the other way."

"What's the bearing?" asked Fred.

"I'm being profound and psychological," said Duff sternly. "Be quiet. Now, we must say to ourselves, why? What motive? You tellme it must be on account of money. Murder for money. It's not unheard of."

"Seems to me I've heard of it," said Fred. "Yeah."

"Who wants money that bad and why?''

"Do you have to ask why?" said Alice in a timid voice.

"Money buys," said Duff, "but it buys a lot of different things. Take Gertrude. What does she want to buy?"

"Her clothes are terrible," said Alice.

"Be quiet," said Fred, "or else be profound, like us. She'd buy the status quo, eh, Mr. Duff?"

"Her prestige," said Duff. "Yes, I think so, don't you?"

"She's got to be the Whidock in the Whitlock house on the hill." Fred nodded

"But she's got her own money," objected Alice. "She's the one who's got some left."

"The regime was on the verge of a change, however," said Duff quietly. "Innes was balking. He was going to take over. The bank would know. Gerrtrude would no longer be mistress of her own fortune, in the bank's eyes. Therefore I suppose the town would know. Charity of their brother. The Whitlock girls,"

"Oh," said Alice.

"Did Gertrude like the idea?"

"She didn't like it," said Alice. "I remember."

"Vanity in her poison," said Duff, in his gentlest voice. "But not hatred. Not revenge."

"No?"

"No, because Gertrude rather likes being blind Don't gasp. She was an unattractive, a haughty, and a proud young girl, unlikely to marry. Unfitted to marry. Unapproachable. Maybe she knew that. Her excuse, you see, for being a spinster, lies in her blindness. A tragedy all her own, which she loves and cherishes, believe me."

"I can't believe . . ."

"However it may have been at the beginning, that's Gertrude now. But she must maintain her picture of herself. Her tragedy must be high class and take place in

dignified economic circumstaiices. She wouldn't enjoy the picture of herself as blind and poor"

"No."

"Gertrude deceives herself easily, wouldn't you say so?"

"She swallowed an awful lot of terribly sticky flattery from you," said Alice.

"She lapped it up."

"Yeah, she would," said Fred.

"Yet, Gertrude's idea of keeping up to snuff, so Josephine tells me, is by giving orders. That's the one element in her character . . . Tell me, is it possible? Can you imagine, with any reality, Gertrude Whitlock, in person and not by deputy, knocking over a lamp and then forgetting it, rather? Gertrude wishing her brother dead so that she might keep her own fortune and have another and stay where she is, a tragic and a lovely legend in the town for the rest of her days?"

"Wishing, sure," said Fred.

"Wishing enough to do something about it? To take action?"

"Yes," said Alice, "yes, I suppose so. But . . . she's blind."

"Never mind that for now."

Fred said, "If she did it, she'd do it like you said, halfconsciously."

"I thought so myself," said Duff. "Let's look at Maud."

"You look," said Fred. "Maud's my pet aversion." Every once in a while Fred let out a three-syllable word. His college education, thought Alice.

"What would Maud want to buy with money?" Duff demanded.

"Candy," said Alice.

"Peanuts," said Fred.

"That's it. Her little comforts," said Duff. "Maud's sensual and lazy."

"Maud's a pig, and she'd as soon kill anybody as squash a fly," said Fred, "for all she'd worry about it."

"Unmoral," said Duff, "yes. But for all that, Maud has a certain directness about her." -

"She'd call a spade a God-damned shovel," said Fred. "Excuse me, Alice."

Alice said, "I know. She's terrible."

"There's another element in our Maud," Duff said, "and that's curiosity. For aJl her sloppiness and her happy-go-luckiness, as Innes says, and her sloth, she's curious. Also, she's intelligent." "Who? Maud!"

"Comparatively speaking," said Duff. "Yes, I think so. Because she doesn't deceive herself. Maud knows she's a slob. She doesn't give a damn, but she knows it."

"If she's intelligent, give me somebody who's dumb enough to take a bath," said Fred in disgust.

"Nevertheless," Duff said, "I don't think Maud fits the psychological pattern, the unconscious murderer."

"Sure she does," Fred insisted. "That's just her sloppiness. It's the same thing, same effect, I mean. Either i she's half-fooling herself, or she's just sloppy." 1'

"You may be right," said Duff thoughtfully. "I can be wrong. I can be baffled," he warned them.

"I think she knows more than she lets on," admitted Alice. "Her eyes are "so bright, in that fat pasty face. . . ."

"But the trouble it takes," murmured Duff. "Life's too short, you know." x

"Damned merry, for Maud, though," said Fred and '' stopped. "Well, what about Izzy?"

"Isabel," said Duff. "Well, now, what is Isabel? Grasping, eh? She'd buy things. What's more, she'd keep them. She's not only grasping, but I'd say she never lets go."

"That's what Innes said," Alice told him. "Innes says she never takes her losses."

"Yes," said Duff, "that fits in. She's got the Woman's Home Companion complete since 1939." "What's her room like?" "Her room is a hoard." "Oh," said Alice, "the sleeves?" Duff said, "Sleeves come later, but I'll tell you for now that nobody has any stained sleeve or any sleeve that looks as if it had been recently washed, nor has Josephine washed any."

"What does that mean?"

"A bare arm," said Duff. "Speaking of arms, I think we may take it that Isabel is still wearing her original artificial arm, since a new one would surely seem a waste of money to her. At least, she'd hoard the old one, and I found no

extra limb lying about among her possessions. Qose your mouth, Alice." Alice's jaws closed in a snap, while Duff went serenely on. "Isabel, then, is grasping. Isabel has energy, too. Don't you think so?"

"Oh, yes, nervous energy," said Alice. "She's awfully nervous. I hate the way she puts her hand on me."

"Can you imagine Isabel setting these traps for her brother's life?"

"Yes," said AHce, "I'm afraid I can. I loathe them all, but if I have a pet aversion, it's Isabel."

"Maud," said Fred.

"Isabel," said Alice.

"Yet why not all three," said Duff. "It could be, of course. Suppose one drops the lamp. Suppose another flies down the hiU in the dark and tugs at the sawhorse. Suppose the third, seeing her sisters fail, as in a fairy tale, slips into the cellar and makes her rounds of the pipes. There isn't a thing to show that one and only one was guilty. And the motive holds for them all, just as you said, Fred, though I scarcely believed you then."

"Do you mean they have a conspiracy?" said Alice, troubled.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I can't imagine that."

"Neither can I," said Fred. "They're so kinda separated."

"Disconnected," agreed Alice.

"I can't imagine a conspiracy, either," admitted Duff, "because I truly believe that neither Gertrude nor Isabel would admit to her sisters that she was a murderess. Not even to themselves," he said, ''will they admit anything. So how admit a thing like that to anyone else?"

"Maud would, though," said Fred.

"Maud might."

"Well," said Alice, ''maybe Maud could have done it all, with Mr. Johnson helping."

Fred's eyes flickered. Duff said, "Please don't bring up Mr. Johnson."

"He moves awful quiet," said Fred disobediently. "Maybe he sneaked up the back stairs and pushed the lamp."

"He didn't," groaned Duff. "He didn't move the detour

♦>

sign edther. He's got an alibi for attempts number one and two."

"What?"

''Oh, yes. Oh, yes. The most perfect alibi. He's only got one pair of pants in all the world and they . . ."

"Were torn!" cried Fred. "Say . . . ! He was hanging around the car, caught his pocket. . .'

"Don't," begged Duff, "mention it'

"All right, but why wouldn't he have turned the dampers?" said Alice, bringing them back to their muttons.

"Josephine says not."

"Why not?"

"The back door makes a racket, even if he doesn't. And don't talk to me about the front door. I'll tell you right now that if he did it, I'm licked. Because I do not imderstand Mr. Johnson."

Fred grinned. "Look," he said, "the trouble with him is, there's nothing to understand. He's practically a blank page. He just says the first thing that comes into his head. He's a simple-minded guy. Not crazy, I don't mean that. But he just barges along from one minute to the next. He doesn't worry, he doesn't even think. He's simple. That's all."

Duff said, "I am too civilized. I have often suspected it."

"Most people are," said Fred generously. ''Say, you've got to see that Indian two or three times before you can believe in him."

"Thank you," said Duff humbly. Alice opened her mouth again.

This Fred! she thought.

21

Shadows were longer across the road. Duff lit another cigarette. "Now, let us deal with the faking business. Are any of them faking? Can we tell? Do we know?"

"Isabel hasn't got a real right hand," said Fred. "We know that"

"Yes, we know that''

"About Gertrude," said Alice. "She must be blind.'' "I see nothing to deny it," said Duff. "She didn't trip on color. Remember, I miscalled the color of the ash tray? There's nothing in her room to indicate sight. If she can see, she is far more wUy and devious and subtle and deliberately maHcious than we think."

"Well, I think she probably is wilier than I think she is. I mean . . ." Alice began to flounder.

"Irish bull, Brennan," said Fred. "Get to Maud. Old happy-go-lucky."

"It's possible," said Duff, "that Maud is not deaf, or at least not as deaf as she makes out."

"But for heaven's sake," said Alice, "if she can hear, why go to all that trouble of making people write things down and learning finger talk and all the nuisance! Why would anybody do that? If Maud's so lazy, I should think ..."

"Wait," said Duff. "Imagine Maud, years ago. Bring up the past. I'm used to it. You try. Remember, one sister is blind. As such, she gets special service, doesn't she? And she is exempt from duty. The other sister has only one arm. Special service again. Exemption from duties. Leaving the third sister, who is whole, in the position of the only one in the lot who might be expected to run errands, attend to small chores, deal with tradespeople, take responsibilities, be the general overseer. There are many small executive duties connected with the running of a house. Interruptions and nuisances. Do you imagine Maud taking kindly to them? On the contrary, I think Maud's laziness perfecdy consistent with a gradual fake loss of hearing. Her sisters say, "You go, Maud"—''Maud had better"—"Maud, will you"; but pretty soon, Maud stops hearing these requests, stops being useful. Maud loafs.

"Maud develops a psychological deafness. By not attending, by a deep inner loafing, she really doesn't hear. Or, at the very least, she seems not to hear. But I really don't know how you are going to prove that she doesn't"

"Likewise," said Fred gloomily, "how are you going to prove that she does?"

Duff sighed. "We can go on guessing," he said. "Did you notice anything in her room, Alice?"

"I looked as hard as I could," she said. "There's no

alarm on her clock, but then, Maud's not the type to have an alarm clock. I'll bet she doesn't care when she gets up. I must say, she didn't seem to hear you when you were being mysterious about the telephone call. You were trying to trick her, weren't you?"

"I wonder if I didn't," said Duff.

Alice drew her brows together. "When?"

"When I dropped my voice and got, as you say, mysterious. She stopped chewing."

"But . . ."

"Ever eat Melba toast?"

"Certainly."

"It makes," said Duff, "a terrible racket in your own ears."

"Sure. Like celery, only worse," said Fred, "She stopped chewing, did she? lin."

"Oh, go on. It could have been just a coincidence," said Alice.

"It could," said Duff. "But she did stop chewing on her Melba toast. If she can hear, then she arranged to be able to hear, when I appeared to be telling secrets. She's curious, you know. If she had gone on eating, I should have thought her truly deaf, or utterly indifferent Alice is right of course. It's no proof. Either way," he added wearily.

"So we're still guessing," Alice said.

Duff cleared his throat. "Did you notice a funny paper stuffed into her window, into the crack?"

"Yes."

"Why do you stuff a newspaper into a crack?"