PROLOGUE

The train that pulled into Ogaunee, Michigan, at 9:15 Friday morning was in no hurry. It settled to a stop and let go with deep metallic sighs, as if it would undo its iron stays and rest awhile.

A tall man in a gray overcoat swung aboard, went down the plushy day coach to a seat along about the middle, laid his coat in the rack, and sat down, settling back with such sudden ease that he seemed to have been there for some time, with the lazy dust rising and falling around him in parallel bands of spring simshine.

A sticky face rose over the seat top ahead Unblinking eyes looked at htm with the insulting stare of a child. The tall man met the infant's eye rudely. In a moment the child's head fell toward its mother's ear and the tongue came out coyly to wrap itself around the edge of a lolly pop in an ecstasy of embarrassment. MacDougal Duff relented and gave die baby the regulation adult smile. Only the youngest and most unspoiled could keep that look for long when met in kind. This one's clouds of glory were shredding thin already. And mine, thought DuflE ruefully, are strictly synthetic.

He was bound for Pinebend, a few hours away, where there was an Oneida reservation. Duff was interested in Indians, this trip. He had been rambling through northern Wisconsin and in and out of the Upper Peninsula, collecting impressions for Duff's History of America, a most unorthodox work which woxild take him, he cheerfully hoped, the rest of his life to write, between murder cases. Ogaunee was a central place to stay.

The train woke with a jerk. Movement on the platform caught his eye. On the dreary boards between him and the shabby littie wooden depot with its gingerbread eaves stood a girl in a gray flannel suit with a green scarf at her throat and no hat on her dark hair. She seemed to be screaming his name.

Did he hear it or read her lips?

"Professor Duff! Oh, Professor Duff! Please! Mr. Duff!"

For a moment his stare was blank with surprise. Then he smiled and lifted his hand.

Whatever the girl was after, it was more than a friendly wave. Her face kept its trouble. She continued to implore him as the train began to move. She even ran along a few steps as if her urgency couldn't let it go. Then she gave up and stood still, and the train chugged around a sweep of track and wiped out Duffs view of her.

Queer.

She had been in one of his classes. So many had. History 2b. Some time ago. Front row. Therefore beginning with A, B, or C. Probably not A. Too far from the right. Nice ankles, he remembered. Hence the front row or he couldn't have remembered the ankles. Miss B., then. Or C. An intelligent face. He'd enjoyed lecturing to it. Responsive. Sense of humor. Irish in her, he'd thought. Not pretty, not quite, but with a flare of spirit that was just as good. Dark hair, blue eyes. Brody? Small chin, wide mouth. Brogan? Brannigan? Skin tight over the cheekbones. A neat foot. Neat round slim body.

Cassidy, was it? Corcoran?

Ah, well, when he remembered her name he would telephone back from Pinebend. Ask Susan. Perhaps the girl was broke and stranded. If so, Susan would take her in.

The train humped itself across a swamp. Inside, dust motes shifted in the dry air. Duff gave his ticket to be punched. The conductor put the pasteboard in Duffs hatband and gave the child a playful swipe with his hand. Duff looked out the window and played his game with the scenery. When those black stumps had been trees, the ground beneath sunless and spongy, a trail would have wound just there, through that Uttle notch, skirted that water, been wary of that marshy margin. Wild birds would have come down there, and the wild man hidden in those reeds. . . . The girl's name was Brennan.

Maybe she knew that MacDougal Duff had retired from teaching and had become, for his bread, a solver of murder cases.

Murder? Duff looked out at the little hills.

The girl in a gray suit and a green felt hat came out on one of the stone stoops and closed the door gendy behind her. She looked at her watch nervously. Caught without its humanity, at two minutes of six, Thursday morning, the South Side Chicago street looked clean and bare in the thin light of dawn.

At six, exactly, a big gray sedan nosed around the corner and came softly along. It was the last word in beautiful American cars. The last for a long time, thought the girl as she walked down the steps with her suitcase.

Tlie chaufeur said, "Good morning. Miss Brennan. You're pretty prompt."

"So are you, Fred."

He put her suitcase in the back and let the door fall shut. "Itll be three-quarters of an hour before we pick up the boss. Want to sit up front?"

The chaufeur was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, rather short, thick-shouldered and stocky. He had muscular wrists and lean hands. It occurred to the girl that if the car had been a horse, he'd have been a centaur. They moved toward the lake and turned north on the outer drive. It was soft going.

Alice Brennan stuffed her fists into her jacket pockets and watched the whitecaps. The lake and the city seemed to suffer a diminution in size. They fell into place on a mental map that had to be smaller scale than usual, to include distance. She recognized the change, the familiar feeling called "getting an early start," the uprooting and relaxing of the mind and the projection of the mind's eye forward along a chosen route. "This is the last trip, I guess," she murmured.

"First and last for this baby," Fred said, patting the wheel. "Four hundred miles." This was score. "Well, 111 be glad to see her get a little dust on her tail, anyhow."

The girl smiled.

He took his chaufeur's cap off and laid it on the seat between them. "Wait'U you see the trail we got to take into the camp. Some fun for fifteen miles."

"Secluded, hm?"

7

"Pretty wild. But it's a nice place. YouTl like it." His voice went off tone on that, just a little awkwardly. "Too bad he's got to close it up ifor the duration," he went on, "but I dunno how you'd get in there without a car."

"I'm supposed to help him make an inventory."

"Is that so?" Fred skipped the faint self-derision in her tone and was politely the recipient of news. "Well, I guess the caretaker's going to move all the way out, then."

"The caretaker's got a wife, hasn't he?" she said rather flatly.

"Oh, sure. She's a nice old dame."

"Is she?"

Fred said softly, "Don't worry."

"Oh, I'm not worrying." She crossed her legs. "Have you got a match? Gosh, I'm sleepy."

"Go ahead, take a nap," he suggested. The car floated. The windows were closed against the morning chill. Soon they were above Evanston, sliding qiiiedy between the varying walls and fences that hid rich men's houses from the thoroughfare. The morning was perfect. Their comfort was absolute. The car went like thought.

"She's running sweet," Fred said. "Aw, something's the matter with me." He thumped the wheel. "Why should I feel so sorry? What business have I got feeling sorry for Innes Whitlock?"

"It's not for him. It's for the car," the girl said softly. "It's so darned beautiful and American. It nearly made me cry."

For a second the car itself faltered, as if with emotion. Then Fred said, with an air of banter. "Kind of sentimental, aren't you?"

The girl's face hardened. "I haven't been sentimental," she said clearly, "since Saturday morning. What are you going to do when the tires fall off and you're out of a job? Enlist?"

Fred smiled, showing a gold tooth far back on the right. The wrinkles radiating from the comers of his eyes looked weathered in. "I'd just as leave go in the Army," he said, with an air of being reasonable, "but I broke my foot a few years ago and the Army don't trust it."

"Broke your foot?"

"Yeah, playing football. But the funny thing is, Mother

Nature has put in a bundh of new bone there, makes it twice as strong. Or that's what the doctor said."

Alice, by opening her eyes wide, knew how to look very innocent and baby-doU-like. "You mean the Army won't trust Mother Naturel"

"Well,'' said Fred, "the Army makes a pair of shoes the same size as each other."

Her eyes narrowed again with laughter. "What will you do, then?"

"rm not worrying. I'll stick to Innes."

"Um-hum."

"He can get me a job if he wants to. A man with a million dollars has got a lot of contacts."

"How right," Alice said in a low voice. "How true! And you've got a contact with a million dollars. Hang onto your contacts. They matter. Three kinds of people, that's all. A few top people who've got something. A lot of other people, the smart ones, trying to make contacts with the top ones and get some of what they've got. And then a whole lot of dumb bunnies who don't know where the percentage Ues. Do you know about percentage, too?"

"Huh?"

"Why, that's what you ask yourself. Is there any percentage? That's the way you tell who your friends are, whom to speak to, whom to be nice to, whom to . . . You be smart, Fred. Always watch the percentage."

"Your philosophy of life?" Fred inquired politely.

"Yes."

''Since Saturday morning?"

"Never mind since when. But I learn fast. I'm quick," she said viciously.

Fred said nothing. They were close to Lake Forest, now, where Innes Whitlock lived; and he turned from the main thoroughfare into a winding road and let the big car loaf along, not hunying.

Alice chewed on her lower lip. In a few minutes she said, "Excuse it, please, Fred."

"Yeah, but listen," he said, as if the argument were his, not hers, "it stands to reason you got to look around and see what goes on. So the whole world's full of chiselers. Chiseled themselves into a sweet mess and still chiseling. You can't get away from it. You look out for yourself and

don't get fooled. That's what I say."

"Sure," she said, "that's what I say."

"Why stick your head in the sand and make out like virtue is rewarded when . . ."

She turned her head sharply. "Who said anything about virtue?"

"I used the wrong word," Fred said. "I didn't mean that." He stopped the car. "Look, kid, I don't want you to get me wrong. But I wanna ask you something."

"Go ahead." She looked him straight in the eye. "We're on common ground. We both know Innes has got a million dollars."

"Well, I just wanted to know. With the three of us going off on this trip today, do you want me to stick around? Or do you want me to disappear once in a while?" Her eyes fell. "I'll do what you want," Fred said. "You understand? I dunno what's in your mind. I thought if I asked, then I'd be able to do what you wanted."

She looked him full in the face again. "I don't think I get you wrong," she said. "You're just asking."

"That's right."

"Well, I'll tell you. Object matrimony."

"Uh-huh," he said. He slid back in his seat. He didn't look relieved.

"I know damn well he doesn't need his secretary to help him close that camp. I think he's working up to . . . what I . .. Well, if I'm wrong"—she shrugged—"heaven will protect the working girl."

"If you're wrong," Fred said, grinning at her, "maybe I could run a little interference for heaven, hm?"

"You think I'm wrong?"

"I dunno," he frowned. "Innes is no wolf. He's been sued for breach of promise twice already." Alice threw her head back and laughed. "Yeah, but . . ."

"Look," she said, good-humoredly, "I know . . ." She couldn't explain the subtle basis for her certainty that in Innes Whitlock's mind she was not to be trifled with. "Call it woman's intuition," she said lightly. "I can always

scream."

He looked at her. His hands were quiet on the wheel. He seemed merely thoughtful. "Thanks a lot, Fred," she said suddenly.

''That's all right. I hope you make it. Money's the only thing that can help you much in the world today. Maybe that won't be for long, but for a while— Say, if I knew a dame with a million dollars, Fd make the same play."

"Who wouldn't?" Alice murmured.

He touched the controls, delicately, and the big car slid on. In a moment or two it hesitated before a pillared gateway.

"Well, get dignified," Fred said, putting his hat on. "We're here."

Alice stiffened her back. "Look here," she said rapidly, "I shouldn't have said all that to you."

'That's right, you shouldn't," he said cheerfully. Then his face changed and his voice was wooden. "This is the house. Miss Brennan." The car stopped and he got out smartly, in one movement.

The broad white house door sprang open. A manservant appeared with luggage. Fred went briskly around the car and opened the tonneau door. A woman in a maid's uniform appeared with a thermos bottle. Innes Whitlock, a rug over his arm, burst out of the doorway.

"To the minute," he said, glancing gracefully at his wrist watch. "Good morning, Alice. How are you? Isn't this a day! I've got a picnic basket Look here, you've got to ride with me."

The little mustache that tossed on his upper lip made him look as if he were pouting. Alice became animated and moved to the back seat. The servants bustled. They stowed things in the trunk. "Are you warm enough, Alice? Tuck in the rug, Fred, on that side. That's it" Fred tucked the rug around her with skillful hands.

Innes's rather short pink nose sniffed the morning. He seemed somehow to give it his blessing. His rather plump white hand made a tiny gesture. The adventure had his permission to begin.

They stopped to eat their picnic lunch before noon. A little after, Alice stood in the sun on a weedy margin of the country road. The Ixmch basket, all neatly packed again,

was in her hand. Everything about her seemed particularly vivid: the pattern of old leaves and dead grasses, the green pushing thurough, the contour of the ground, higher behind her, going down to a weed-choked ditch between her feet and the car. It was just a roadside, unloved and untrodden. Even the broken fence above bounded a strip of land no one had cultivated. It was an undistinguished spot

Fred was walking back along the road, kicking the dusty grass. He saw her and came quickly to take the basket. For a second his brown eyes asked her a sober yet impertinent question.

There was the tiniest flicker, a mere flame of reproach in her blue glance, and then she turned. Innes blundered out of the brush with three wood anemones in his hand. "Oh, Mr. Whitlock," gushed Alice, "aren't they sweet! What are they?" .

That was an "if' moment. Every so often there is a point at which, if one looks back, the course of events can be seen to have taken a turn. Most moments are details between fixed points. This one was a point from which Alice's life branched off in a totally new direction. If Fred had not asked her that quick, impudent question with his eyes and if she had not, perversely, refused to answer it—partly, of course to punish him for the impudence—if she had not called out in that false voice, meant to deceive, "Oh, Mr. Whitlock . . ."

At that moment, she might just as easily have called him Innes because she had been engaged to marry him for fifteen minutes.

He'd waited no longer than after lunch. He'd put his enameled coffee cup down, reached for her hand, and said, "Alice, my dear, I want you to marry me." It was very simple and rather touching. She had been able to turn to him with real surprise and say, "Why, Innes! I'm glad you do." Innes had, thereupon, kissed her. It was a few minutes before she could say lightly, "Of course you know I'm marrying you for your money?" To this Innes had replied with a happy sigh, "Just so long as you marry me ..."

Innes had come through it very well, Alice had felt. She was a little ashamed of telling the plain taith in so deceptive a manner. Therefore, it was perhaps the first stirring of a sense of loyalty to a new alliance that made her withdraw from even the shadow of a conspiracy with the chauffeur.

If marks an alternate trail, along which one can see no farther than the first comer.

"What's the matter with it?'' asked Innes impatiently, some hours later.

"Nothing I can't fix m an hour," Fred said. "Sorry, sir. Shall I limp into the next town?"

"Will it limp?"

"Just about."

"Where are we?"

Fred reached for his map. ''Sixty-five miles to camp yet. We're ten miles out of Ogaunee, sir."

"Oh, lord," Imies groaned. "Don't tell me."

"If you and Miss Brennan don't mind just sitting here I can get busy right away. I thought— "

"Yes, yes." Innes pasted his hand over his brow with artistic weariness. "Are you cold, Alice?"

"Chilly," she said She felt exhausted, mentally and spiritually. The long afternoon drive had been a strain, she wasn't quite sure why. She thought perhaps their swift flight along the roads was too comfortable and oddly static. "I'm a little tired of riding. Can't we walk up and down while he fixes it?"

Innes said, "No, no. Better try to make it into Ogaunee, Fred. We'll get this girl warm. Stay for dinner if we're asked."

"Asked?" Alice said, startled.

"My sisters' house is in Ogaunee. We'll stop in there."

"I didn't know you had a sister."

"I have three sisters," Innes said. "They still live up here. It was my father's house. My dear, I'll tell you a secret. I was bom in Ogaimee, MicWgan."

"Oh?" Alice invited more. ' "I must confess Fd planned to skip by, this time," he went on uneasily. "They're another generation, really. Half-sisters, you see. My father was twice married."

Alice felt she ought not to say "oh" again, so she kept quiet.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"Mind? Of course not."

"It'll be more comfortable than sitting here," Innes said a little doubtfully, with an effect of gnawing on his mustache. Then he smiled. "We'll be some excitement for them." He patted hex hand.

The big car crept forward, complaining. Alice knew nothing about the insides of a car. She looked at the back of Fred's neck and wondered if it hurt him, this humiliation of his Proud Beauty. She herself sat ridiculously tense, as if the car had pain,

"This isn't going to damage the engine?" demanded Innes, who evidently knew nothing about the insides of a car either.

"No, sir," Fred said stolidly.

For a long time no one spoke, as if the car's plight cast a spell of silence over them. Only Innes cleared his throat from time to time, but he never quite said anything. Alice thought it tactful to ask no questions. She simply sat, and slowly began to wonder what it was he felt he ought to say and couldn't

It was a curious ten miles, full of reluctance. Not the nightmare quality of trying to get to a place and always failing, but an equally nightmarish feeling of taking much labor and some pain to get to a place where one didn't want to be. Ogaunee was a gash across the smooth face of their plans. Furthermore, it required bracing. One had to brace oneself. Alice felt that.

When at last they crawled past a house or two, Innes burst into speech. It was his home town, after all.

"This is iron-mining country, you see. This is the Menominee Range. What they do here is underground. Up on the Mesabi they strip off the earth and take the ore out of an open pit. Makes a mess. But it was pretty here when I was a kid. My father owned the land all around and brought in Eastern captial in the old days. There's a shaft-house; see? That's Briar Hill."

The wounded car crept aroimd a curve. Ahead, the road dipped and staggered over a kind of earthen bridge. On either side of the built-up causeway the ground fell precipitously into two great deep pits, down the far sides of which was scattered debris, as of shattered houses.

"Good heavens! It's fallen In!" cried Alice. Innes said carelessly, "Well, you see, when they mine

underground they honeycomb the place. Where the ore comes out, they prop up the roof with timber and go deeper, down to another level. Of course, later, when the ore's all gone, the timbers rot, I suppose, and collapse."

"And the earth falls in!" Alice said, awestricken. "The houses, too?"

''Same of them were over the mines." "But how terrible!"

"Oh, no. Nobody gets hurt. It's not like an earthquake, you know. It's slow. It just sinks."

"I still think it's terrible. It isn't going to fall m any more?"

"No, no. Although they have to keep filling in this road." She looked at him, horrified. "Oh, it's all over now. Don't worry. These mines were played out long ago. This is what you might call a ghost town." "Is it, really? Like the ones in the West?" "Not so romantic," said Innes. "Why do people stay here?"

"I do not know." Innes dropped his guidebook manner and was personally vehement. "I wouldn't." Then, with that curious reluctance, ''Of course, my sisters . . ."

"I don't know if she'll take the hill, sir," Fred said over his shoulder, "but I'll try."

"Look," Innes said, pointing out his window and up. "That's the house. That's the back of it." 

Alice leaned, almost lying across his lap. "The house where you were born?" 

"Yes." He supported her shoulders tenderly. "It was quite a place once, if you can believe it."

Alice saw a whitish structure above some rocks which rose out of the side of the pit and went up. She had goodeyes. "What a queer place for a door," she said. "Why, there's a door way up in the wall that just leads right out into space."

Innes looked, too. His mustache brushed her cheek. "There used to be a back porch. It was torn down years ago. Got pretty shaky. Lord, I'd almost forgotten. I must have been about ten."

She tried very hard to think of Innes as about ten, to see his much-shaven face soft and hairless, his smudged eyes fresh and naive; to pare away hi her imagination the central paunchiness of his figure, the settled and not un-feminine width of his hips; to take out of him the starch that thirty years had put into his body and mind, to see him lithe and free and about ten. It wasn't easy.

"You had a rocky backyard to play in," she said, with the best sympathy she had.

"No, it was a pine woods," Innes said dreamily. "All this land was higher than the road is now. It just sloped off, all trees. I used to know the paths. I used to lie on the ground and hear them blasting, deep under."

Alice squeezed his hands. For a moment she thought she understood why he was reluctant to revisit Ogaunee.

"You never grew up in a mining town. You never heard the steam shovels puffing and snorting all night long. Or lived by the whistles. Well it's dead now. I . . ."

They were across the pit and in the village. Almost immediately they turned sharply to the right and began to climb. Innes forgot his reminiscence. "Look here, Fred, we can get away right after dinner?" He spoke not to a servant, but to a man who knew the answer.

"Sure we will. Why wouldn't we?" Fred answered boldly, like a man who did know and could reassure another.

Back of them, to their left, and soon below, the town lay wholly exposed. A block of frame buildings leaned together with a gap here and there, like a tooth gone. Dwellings marched evenly in a few rows, then broke ranks and scattered. A few were lost in the hills. Across the far end, a line of railroad track made a clean edge between town and swamp.

Alice caught this maplike impression out of the comer of her eye. She had to help will the car up the hill when it shuddered and seemed to fall, when it took heart, then seemed to slip and hang on the brink of backward motion, then coughed and pushed weakly up with scrambling wheels, catching for a hold.

Once Fred said, "The cottage, sir?"

"No, no," Innes said, pushing on the floorboards with his suede-shod feet "Go on, don't stop, go on."

Fred leaned forward and by sheer stubbornness seemed to call out a spurt of power that lifted the car up the last incline and rolled it, dying, to the level drive before the door.

Innes sighed. "O.K., Fred. Bring Miss Brennan's bag. She'll want to freshen up. Then you can get busy."

The house was of wood, long painted white. Its facade was like a face. It had eyes, nose, and mouth, if one happened to notice. Alice looked up and saw the upstairs window eyes seeming closed under raised brows and thought the expression on the face was haughty and self-satisfied.

As they stood on the porch after Innes had turned the metal handle of the old-fashioned bell, she could see through a window to her right the outline of a pair of shoulders, tremendously broad. It was no more than an outline, dim behind the lace; but she knew it wasn't a woman.

"Are your sisters married?" she asked Innes hastily, ready to revise an unwarranted impression.

He looked shocked. "No," he said. "Oh, no, none of them." His small mouth under the mustache remained rounded for speech, but again he did not say what more was in his mind, though Alice waited. On this unfinished, even unbegun, communication between them, the door opened.

The woman who opened the door seemed, at first glance, pop-eyed with surprise. She was big-boned and rather thin, although her face was round and firm and her features melted into one another without any angles. She looked, thought Alice, like a Botticelli woman, but not so fat. There was a convex swelling under her throat, and the pop eyes were permanent. "Why, Mr. Innes!" she said.

"Hello, Josephine." Innes affected a great joviality, as if he were playing Santa Claus. "Alice, this is Josephine. The car's broken down, Josephine, so I guess we're here for dinner, if you can find anything for us to eat. Are my sisters .. . ?"

The woman nodded. She made a fumbling motion with her cotton dress as if she were drying her large bright-pink hands.

"Tell them, will you?" urged Innes. "Come in, Alice.

Put the bag there, Fred." Innes asserted himself as if he needed to prove that he belonged here. The center hall lay between two arches. He led the way through the velvet-hung opening at the right. The house seemed quiet and deserted. A new-laid fire was burning in the grate, the kindling just caught But there was no one there.

The room was warm and a little stuffy. It was fuU of furniture and knickknacks with rugs overlying other rugs on the floor. Every table had a velvet cover and a lace cover over that. The place had a stuffed and cluttered elegance. Eveything in it was elegant of itself, to the point of absurdity. A Victorian room, Alice decided, and no imitation, either. Yet, because it was the real thing it impressed her. The conviction that these furnishings were still elegant was hard to resist. Someone so patently thought so.

"Sit down, my dear.'' Behind them, Fred had vanished. Josephine had gone upstairs. Alice loosened her jacket. "rU ... er . .. just fetch Gertrude." Innes made for a door in the wall opposite the front of the house.The curiosity that had occupied Alice until now was touched with panic.

"Do I look all right?" she said.

Innes turned, not his rather too bulky hips, but his head only. His eyes appealed to her as he looked backward over his shoulder. "It doesn't matter," he said, and his reluctance broke like a crust. "My sister Gertrude is blind."

Alice sat still, feeling the shock ebb out of her nerves. Innes had left her. She was quite alone. She felt submerged in this unfamiliar house, drowned without an i-dentity. Her eyes went to the fire, which at least was familiar and alive.

Alone, she should be gloating, "Goody, goody, I'm going to marry a million dollars." No wonder she felt strange and out of herself. Nothing to worry about. No living to make. Living's all made. Quick work, Alice.

Only last Saturday morning Alice had sat in her office with no dowry, nothing to swap in the marriage market, no money, prestige, influence, nothing to bring to her wedding but the bride. Now, on Thursday, slie'd swapped just that for a million dollars. Show him. Show Art Killeen. Two could play.

Quick work since Saturday morning when he'd come in-

to her office and sat on her desk with his leg swinging and said, "I'm courting a North Side debutante these days, you know. I'm really working at it." Said it in laughter, given the message kmdly, lightly, in laughter: "Better give it up, Alice. It wUl never be." She was ashamed to think he'd known she thought . . .

Oh nonsense! Why shouldn't she have thought they were going to be married, she and Art Killeen? They were in love. She'd been so dumb she hadn't known. No percentage in love. A silly, unprofitable thing, so often an economic or political mistake. Leading, however, in her case to a million dollars. Had it not? Would she have come from New York to Chicago if Art Killeen hadn't thought it such a fine idea that he'd got her the job with his pet, his wealthiest client?

A woman sees her husband's lawyer sometimes.

"I am looking," Alice said to herself solemnly, "into what the French call an abyss!" Muscles at the comers of her mouth flattened involuntarily. Well, if she could smile she must be getting better. Or was it wild hope running like a weed to spring up though she'd cut it down?

She had heard no sound, but she lifted her eyes and saw a man in the room. He was enormous. His great fat thighs strained in a pair of filthy dark trousers. A green flannel shirt, torn at the armhole, was open at his bullish neck, showing a stretch of dirty underwear. His hair was lank, black, and long enough to show below his ears. His skin was brown, and his face glistened as if it had been oiled. His eyes were a sharp black, without brown or yellow. He stood in the middle of the room, looking at her without much curiosity. She could have screamed.

Then she saw that he carried a hod of coal. She shrank back in her chair and said nothing. Soon he walked silently to the grate, knelt, and began to pour coal upon the fire. She saw the muscles of his broad shoulders working under the fat. He was not a Negro. His features were thick, but the mouth was firm, and there was a flaring line from his nostrils to the tip of his nose that was both foreign and familiar, though she couldn't name him. She couldn't tell what he was. He knelt not two feet from her, and she became gradually aware of an odor and was nearly sick. The man put forth a scent, like an animal.

In a moment he had finished with the fire. He rose and was gone as indifferently as he had come. But before he left, be poked his dirty fingers into a box of candy that lay among the many trifles on the mantel and casually took two.

Alice sat still, her heart pounding in her throat.

In a moment or two the door in the back wall opened, and Innes led forth a straw-colored lady. "Gertrude," he said with anxious social sweetness, a tone that poured soothing oil upon this meeting and begged them both to be kind for his sake, "this is Alice Brennan. Alice, this is my oldest sister.''

"How do you do. Miss Whitlock," said Alice, rising.

The woman turned her face toward the voice. She was somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. Her hair was a pile of pale straw, severely drawn back from her thin, bloodless face. The eyes were as pale as the rest of her, and even her brows and lashes made no easily discernible marks, so that the face was blank, as if eyes had been left out of it altogether. Her lips, too, were unreddened by blood or anything else. Yet there was a certain haughtiness about her tall, stiff figure and the impact of a personality.

"I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Brennan," she said in a rather high voice that was however, not thin, but rich in flute tones. It held a deliberate sweetness, faintly affected. "Innes tells me you have had trouble with the car."

"Can you give us dinner, Gertrude?" Innes said with a combination of humility and demand. "If not, I suppose we can . . ."

"Certainly, we shall be glad to give you dinner," Gertrude said proudly, almost as if she were offended. "Speak to Josephine."

"Well I have, but I will again. . . ." Innes was awkward. This pale sister seemed to unbalance him, as if he saw himself in two lights, once as her young and somehow humbled brother, once as Innes Whitlock, the successful man, and he couldn't make the images blend.

Gertrude dismissed the domestic problem as if it didn't concern her. She moved forward to find a chair. Alice sent a questioning look to her fiance.

limes began to chuckle. "Gertrude is pretty marvelous," he said heartily. "Gertrude, I can see her wondering how on earth you find your way so well."

Alice, who had been wondering nothing of the sort, saw with surprise that the woman's thin lips smiled, almost triumphantly. "But I know my way perfectly in this house," she said. "Never worry about that." She seemed to unbend a little as if this topic were welcome. "I have been totally bluid for many years, but I do not let my affliction prevent me from moving about this house with complete confidence."

"Why, that's wonderful!" breathed Alice. "I do think that's wonderful. Miss Whitlock."

Innes beamed. Alice knew she'd caught on quickly, that this was what she ought to be saying.

"I simply resolved," Gertrude said and Alice recognized a worn quality in the phrase, "that I would never be a burden. Nor have I been." The blind woman sat down in a chair near the fire. She picked up an elegant box lying close to her hand. "Do you smoke, Miss Brennan?" she said pleasantly, holding the box quite accurately in Alice's direction.

"I do, thank you." Alice reached out her hand. Then she saw with dismay that the box was empty. The blind woman was showing off, and she had made a mistake.

For the space of half a second, Alice hesitated. Then she fumbled in her jacket pocket with her left hand. "I don't like to take the last one," she said with an apologetic and rather timid laugh. She dipped her hand into the box, letting the woman feel its pressure.

Innes leaped forward with a match and lit the cigarette Alice had pulled from her own pocket. "Let me," he said gallantly. "Gertrude is marvelous, really, isn't she?" His eyes congratulated Alice and thanked her, too.

Alice leaned back with a little glow in her heart. She was pleased with herself for having thought so quickly how to save the blind woman's pride and still warn her not to make the same mistake again. Having done Gertrude a service, in a way, Alice felt warmer toward her.

But Gertrude said, rather petulantly, "It ought to be full. Josephine is not quite all there is to be desired in a servant. It is very difficult, you can imagine . . ."

"Yes, indeed," murmured Alice.

"The girls who are willing to go into domestic service are quite untrained," Gertrude went on, "and quite im-trainable, I'm afraid."

Alice murmured again. The conversation seemed to her to have taken a queer turn. It was peculiar to sit here and discuss Gertrude's servant problem when the news of the moment was surely Innes's unexpected arrival and Alice's introduction to this house. But, she told herself, Gertrude Whidock's world was dark and limited.

"Josephine does very well, Gertrude," Innes said soothingly. "The house looks well. Just as it always did."

Gertrude sighed. "Innes," she said, "I wish you would speak to Maud and Isabel. I do not understand it. I, alone, am maintaining the house again. I am perfectly willing to do so. You realize that."

"I know," Innes said angrily. "I know aU about it." Faint pink came up under his skin and his eyes looked sullen.

"Yet I seem to have less and less," Gertrude went on, scarcely heeding; "and really, we cannot do without servants. Even if it would look well, which it would not."

"Good heavens, of course you can't do without servants," Innes cried. "Tell me—the same old thing, I suppose?"

"They say they cannot share," Gertrude shrugged. "I haven't doubted them. I don't care to discuss it, naturally."

"You haven't gone into your capital?"

"The bank will know. I know nothing about that sort of thing." Gertrude Implied that no lady would.

Innes clicked his tongue.

"But how sordid," Gertrude said suddenly. "Forgive me, Miss Brennan. This must come under the head of business and you do imderstand business, I suppose. I don't see Innes often. I must snatch a moment."

"Tm a bad boy," Innes said with his pout. He had a way of being whimsical about his own shortcomings.

The blind woman pursed her dry lips. "Of course, Innes is Stephen's son but not Sophia's," she said, as if this explained something. "That is Sophia, hanging over the mantel."

Startled, AKce looked up. Sophia was, indeed, hanging on the wall but looking as if she had never been alive at all. A pale oval face, stiffly done by a bad artist, it had a kind of crookedness to it, as if the artist had lost control of what little skill he had and gotten the perspective wrong. One eye looked insolently at the beholder, as eyes do in such portraits, but the other rolled a little wUdly, as if it looked elsewhere. No, not elsewhere, but inward, as if half the woman dreamed.

"An excellent likeness of my mother," Gertrude said complacently.

There was sound on the stairs of feet plopping flat on each step and a dumpy figure appeared in the arch. Innes stepped quickly forth, took the newcomer's hand and swung it, making a little bow at the same time. "My sister, Maud."

The dumpy one chuckled. "Surprise, eh, Innes?" she said in a rasping voice, a queerly masculine voice, harsh and unpleasant and toneless. "You don't drop in like this so often."

Alice thought immediately of the Duchess in Through the Looking Glass, or was it Wonderland? Her nose was an untidy pug. Her hair was a rat's nest. Alice found a moment to wonder how anyone could deliberately go to work and arrange a head of hair like that. It was snarled and twisted into a pagoda full of hairpins, and there was no logic in it. Maud's skin was gray and hung on her face in folds. She wore a black dress embellished with tags of lace as illogical and haphazard as the arrangement of her hair. Her fat ankles were bound into high white shoes which, Alice saw, not without shock, were dirty and yellowish. She came closer, and her lively little gray eyes peered curiously at the girl.

"How ja do?" said Maud and stuck out a slab of a hand. The puffy flesh ended in dirty fingernails. Alice winced. Her nostrils twitched, then she stopped breathing; for from sister Maud arose an odor, definitely an odor; and, although fainter, it was the same rank animal smell she had noticed before.

"How do you do. Miss . . . Miss Maud," Alice foundered, looking desperately to Innes. "Is that proper?" She heard herself giving a very nervous litde laugh. "I can't

very well call you both Miss Whitlock. I . . ."

But Maud was looking at Innes, and her harsh, unlovely voice cut through Alice's sentence and stopped it.

"Who's the girl?" she said. "Where'd you find her?"

Blood rose in Alice's face. The blind woman said quietly, ''My sister Maud is quite deaf. Miss Brennan. She doesn't hear you at all."

Alice had trouble to draw her breath smoothly. "Thank you," she panted. "I didn't know."

"She is really rather helpless," said Gertrude contemptuously.

Innes had been spelling on his fingers. Maud's little eyes turned to the girl. They were bright and peered from folds of her grayish flesh.

"Secretary, eh?" she said bluntly. She waddled over to the chair in which Alice had been sitting. She collapsed into it. Her fat little body simply melted its bones and fell down. She stretched her ugly legs out and looked up at the mantel. Innes reached for the candy box. He did this automatically and handed it down. Maud dipped her fingers in.

"Have some candy?" she said to Alice, who shuddered "No." The woman stuffed three pieces into her mouth and grinned at the same time.

"Look here, Maud . . . Excuse me, Alice." Innes snatched a pad of paper from the incomprehensible folds of the woman's dress and produced a pencil. He scribbled.

"What's that?" Maud said, regarding what he had written without much interest. "Oh, financial, eh?" She grinned. "My financial position. Innes, you're a card."

He tapped the paper with his forefinger, impatiently. He was quite ready to dominate this sister.

"I've still got the two Liberty Bonds," Maud said. "Isabel hid them on me. " She went into rusty laughter.

Innes pantomined.

"Oh, I dunno," Maud said. "Spent it, I guess. Eh?" She took another chocolate. "It goes," she said slobbering and sucking in the overflow with a loud slupp, "Isabel's the one. She never spent an easy cent in her life, and it goes just the same." Maud heaved with mirth. "Makes her pretty mad. Should think it would."

"This," said Gertrude with an air of confidence to

Alice, "is extremely distasteful to me."

"And to me," limes said, rather grimly. His gaze was fixed on the deaf woman. "I warned you the last time. I'll make up no more deficiencies. Fll expect all your papers and accounts within the week."

Gertrude stiffened. "I'd prefer to go on with the bank, as usual," she said icily.

"Don't know what you say," rumbled Maud. "Write it down."

Innes gnawed his mustache. "Later," he said with a worried glance at Alice. "Gertrude, you must see it's to protect you."

She lifted her pale chin. "I am no one's burden."

"Innes . . ."

The third sister stood in the archway. She was not as short as Maud nor as thin as Gertrude, but medium tall with a plmnp breast like a pigeon. Her hair was a litde darker than straw and ballooned aroxmd her face like an inverted umbrella, then subsided in a round mound on top of her head. Her complexion was mottled, but she had a kind of meaty color. Her features were sharp, but because they were embedded in a roimd-jowled face, die effect was not sharp. Her eyes, Alice noticed with a shock, were like the eyes in the portrait. One watched and one dreamed.

"Isabel, how are you?" Innes was faintly hostile. "This is Alice Breiman, who's with me. My secretary. Alice, come meet my youngest sister."

Isabel smiled with her lips together. Impulsively, on ac-coimt of the smile, Alice held out her hand. Quick, but not quicker than the veiled dismay in the woman's eyes, Innes ran his arm through Alice's and drew hers down.

"I was saying, Isabel," he said sternly, "that I shall have to do what I threatened to do and take over aU your business matters. I understand you are in a financial mess again.''

He was ready to dominate this sister, also, but she was slippery. Isabel's eyes slid sidewise and down. She didn't answer. Instead she said, "You're always welcome, of course," in a kind of brisk whme; "but I do wish we had known, Innes ..."

"We couldn't very well warn you," Innes defended himself haughtily. "The car went wrong. That wasn't our fault."

"Well, I do hope you won't mind having just what we were about to have ourselves." Her thin smile turned to Alice. "You see, I think dinner is actually ready. And it's so late, you know . . ."

"Please don't trouble about anything," said Alice a lit-de coldly.

"Give us pot luck, Isabel," Innes said, "for heaven's sake."

Isabel's smile remained much the same. "Of course we are very glad to see you both." Her voice had no range. "Perhaps Miss Brennan would care to wash?" Isabel put her left hand, which was small and nervously strong, on Alice's arm. "Is this your bag? I'll call Mr. Johnson."

"Please don't trouble."

The naUs on the hand were very long. The fingers tightened. Alice stood still in the woman's grasp. Her heart began to pound again.

Isabel let her go suddenly and turned away with a quick and somewhat crooked motion of the body.

Innes said, in a low voice, "Isabel's lost her right arm. I ought to have told you."

Then Alice saw the gray kid glove covering stiff artificial fingers on the hand that hung at Isabel's side as she moved crabwise across the hall.

"Yes, you ought to have told me," she said quiedy. "You really ought. Why didn't you, Innes?"

He looked as if he would melt when she raised her reproachful eyes. Alice saw his lower lip push out. With sudden insight, she knew that in a moment he would feel the punishment to be greater than the crime. She looked at this petulant millionaire, the man she was goijig to marry, and she saw her cross of gold.

"Never mind," she said breathlessly. "I only hope I didn't offend her. Oh, Innes"—she made her eyes round—"do you think I have?"

"No, no, of course not," he said fondly. "Of course not, my dear."

It didn't matter much, Alice saw, if Isabel was offended, as long as Inncs needn't feel uncomfortable about it

"Will you take the yoiing lady's bag upstairs, Mr. Johnson?" Isabel whined.

Mr. Johnson was the gross man in the dirty flannel shirt. He followed her into the hall and scooped up Alice's bag as i£ it had been a ping-pong baU. "Sure. Where do you want it?" His inflections were pure American. His teeth, some of them, were gold. His black eyes rested on Alice briefly.

"In the little guest room," Isabel said, in her tone of perpetual worry. "The heat's not on in Papa's room." She put her claw on Alice's arm again. "Mr. Johnson will show you."

Alice wanted to talk and scream like a frightened child. She did not want to go off upstairs with that outlandish creature named, of all incongruous names in the world, Mr. Johnson. Innes saved her.

"Wait a minute, Alice. Come in here, Isabel. For just a minute. I have something to tell you. All three of you. This is news, my dears, really news," Innes was being Santa Claus again, with the same loud, false, hearty good will with which he had entered this house. Gertrude cocked her pale head. Isabel drew within the room with her sidewise step; and Maud, as he tapped her shoulder, turned her shrewd eyes up at him.

"Alice and I are engaged to be married," he said. And then, without sound, he mouthed the words again for the deaf woman.

It seemed to Alice that sound disappeared from the world. The shattering stillness and Innes's mouth working silently seemed to prove that her own ears had failed her. Gertrude, sitting with her head cocked, did not move. Isabel put her left hand out and drew it back. Alice thought she must have cried out, yet because of her own sudden deafness, she had not heard the cry. Not until the fire muttered was she sure it was a real silence that enclosed them.

Maud broke it. "Married?" she croaked. "You and her, eh? Is that so!"

"No, no." Isabel reached with frantic haste for the

paper pad. "Not yet. Engaged." She said it furiously and she wrote it furiously, with her left hand, pressing hard. The smile on her face was a frozen thing.

"How very interesting." The blind woman's voice tinkled coolly. "Well, Innes, you have my best wishes, of

course."

"It's pretty good for an old bachelor like me, isn't it?" Innes said, rocking on his heels. Alice bit her lip.

"Engaged, eh? High time." Maud was accidentally apropos. Her eyes had a light of lewd speculation in them. Alice looked away, anywhere, looked at Isabel.

"Such a surprise," said Isabel, still plaintive. "My dear, we have quite despaired of Innes. Now we shall have to call you Alice. Isn't that nice?"

Her ideas seemed disconnected, as if her mind were elsewhere. But her smile was blooming.

"Brennan," said Gertrude delicately, as if she tasted it. "B,r, e, double n?"

"A,n," finished Alice. It seemed absurd that her first and only remark should be two letters of the alphabet. But they fell from her lips, and nothing else came.

Maud said gratingly, "Innes, you old devil," and slapped her thigh.

"We think we're going to be very happy," said Innes, foolishly loud. "Don't we, darling?"

Alice's shoulders were stiff and unyielding under the curve of his arm. She could not meet that mood. Could not, and no graceful phrase would come.

"Beg your pardon." Fred, the chaufeur, spoke from the hall. He must have come through the back of the house. He touched his forehead to the sisters. "Thought I'd better tell you. I'm going to take her down the hill, sir, and have them put in a couple o' quarts of oil."

"You mean it's running!" cried Innes.

"I think she'll be all right now," Fred said stolidly.

"Good work. That's fine. Fine."

Alice drew out of Innes's arm and found she was trembling.

"Tell your man," said Gertrude, "that Josephine will find him something to eat in the kitchen."

"Thank you, ma'am," Fred said. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

He left the way he had come, not having looked at Alice even once.

Innes took her upstairs in rather a hurry, after that.

The servant, Josephine, came hesitantly to the parlor, looking backward and up toward their disappearing feet.

''Well, Josephine, what is it?" Isabel spied her..

"Excuse me," Josephine said in a hushed voice, "but there's veal in the meat loaf, Miss Isabel."

"Yes," she said, "yes . . ."

"And you know Mr. Innes. So I wondered."

"Oh, dear," Isabel said. "There's nothing else m the house. I really don't know . .. Perhaps he's outgrown ..."

"Don't you think," Gertrude said gently, "it was always his imagination? I should venture to say that if one simply didn't mention . . ."

"There's very little veal," Isabel said. "It's nearly all beef."

Josephine looked from one to the other.

Maud roused herself. "Why don't we have dinner?" she shouted. "What are we waiting for?"

Josephine grimaced and pointed upstairs.

"Don't know what you mean," Maud said stubbornly. "Where's dinner? Why ain't it on the table? Write it down."

Alice closed the bathroom door upon herself vnth sagging relief. Innes had kissed her in the hall. "You're so pretty," he said. "Well go on right after dinner. Right after dinner." He was in his spirits, but this was meant for comfort and as comfort she took it. Nevertheless, the bathroom was sanctuary. Here, for a few moments at least, she would be alone and away from any members of the Whitiock family. Perhaps she could get in touch with Alice Brennan, that independent young woman with such firm ideas of her own, who seemed to have evaporated, who seemed to have been for many hours a mere echo, an echoing mirror, a copy of something called a young lady.

As she splashed cold water on her face, she heard the whir of a starter, pulled the bliad aside, and saw the big gray car slip around a segment of the drive visible from this side window. It was running all right. The tail light winked at her.

Thank God, she thought, this is only for an hour or so more. Only for dinner. Right after dinner, Innes said, they'd be away. They would push on north. It would be dark, of course. She and Innes would sit side by side in the dark. They would come to the bad road in the dark and then at the end of it. . .

Alice leaned against the marble washbowl and looked at her fear in the glass. This was strange. Why must she tell herself these future steps, one by one? Because she could not see them. She couldn't imagine. Always, almost always, there persisted in her mind a view ahead, an outline of what was going to happen next. Vague, perhaps, but with clearly imagined spots in it. Arrival at a destination. Pieces of a plan. Pictures.

Only once before had she felt this blankness, this loss of the previewing sense, this chopping off of the antennae of her mind as they went forward into the future. That had been when she had been driving home from a dance with a gang, and she could not see herself getting home. The picture wasn't there. As now, she couldn't imagine it. It remained imimagined, an empty plan, without images, without faith.

That night the car had hit a tree and turned over.

Maybe I'm going to die, this time, she thought. Then, with a rush of her misery and her bitterness, "What the hell difference would it make?" she said aloud. And what difference would it make, indeed, when she was going to marry Innes Whitlock and not Art Killeen, ever?

In the long hall, on her way back, she met the chaufeur.

"Miss Brennan?"

"Yes." She kept her scrubbed face turned away.

''Congratulations." She turned her head angrily. His hand with the long thin fingers was held out to her.

"It's not proper to congratulate the girl," she said rudely. "Don't you know any better? Congratulate the man, but wish her happiness."

"Is that so?" he murmured mildly.

"Yes, of com'se," she said. It was not until she had closed the door of her room that she recognized his innocent mildness for the sham it was, and what he had said and meant came back to her like an echo.

He had meant to congratulate her.

Alice set firm and defiant feet on the stairs, going down, but there was a carpet. She could hear their voices in the parlor.

Gertrude's flute: "Of course Innes is Susan's son so it can't matter as much, you know. And indeed, it's possible that quite nice girls go into business these modem days.''

Isabel's monotone: "You know very little about it. She's very young. Much too young for Lmes. Innes ought...



Maud, crashing in: "Say, Innes'll have twins before the year is out. Litde heirs. Little sons and heirs. I think she's pregnant." Maud's laughter.

Isabel said, "Oh, be quiet!"

Gertrude, a soft soprano ripple: "Someone is on the stairs."

Maud, harshly: "Getting touchy, Innes is. And you won't get any . . . Eh? What?"

Isabel, in the archway: "Come in. Miss Brennan. My dear, I meant to say Alice, of course. Come in, my dear. Dinner will be served in a few minutes now. As soon as ' Innes is down. Did you find what you needed?"

"Yes, indeed." Smiling, her head high, Alice walked into then: parlor. They turned toward her. Their heads on their necks were three stalks in the same wind.

"And when do you plan to be manied?" said Isabel.

"Yes," said Gertrude, ''we are so interested. Have you set a day?"

"Say, Alice Brennan," said Maud, "that's your name, ain't it? When is the wedding? How soon, eh?"

"Oh, quite soon," said Alice carelessly. "There's no reason to wait." She took Maud's pad.

"Very soon," she wrote firmly.

About an hour after dinner, Alice pushed open the sliding doors of the second parlor, the room on the left of the hall, called the sitting room, and let herself through into the hall. Fred was just coming in by the front door. "Fred . . ."

He touched his forehead. "If your bag's ready, Miss Brennan . . ."

"Wait," she said.

"Mr. Whitlock wants to start."

"He's not going to start," she said belligerently. "Do you know who's the doctor here?"

"No, I don't, Miss Brennan."

"I'm worried," Alice said. She appealed to him with a little smile. "I really am. I never saw anybody as sick as that, just over the wrong food. I don't think we ought to let him go on." Fred was listening respectfully. "Do you?" she demanded.

"I couldn't say. Miss Brennan."

Alice stamped her foot. "Oh, stop it!" she cried. "This is no time for revenge."

Fred grinned. He suddenly stopped being remote and stood at ease, although he scarcely moved. "O.K." he said. "You put me in my place and now you want me to pop out again. Well, what's the matter?"

"Suppose we get him miles off in the car some place and then he collapses? I don't want the responsibility."

"Yeah, but he wants to go."

"He won't go if I make fuss enough. -Look, I'm just not going to go off with him unless some doctor says it's all right. Have you ever seen him like this before?"

"Yeah, once."

"What happened?"

"That time he was in bed three days."

"Well, you see? Here he's with his own family and in a house with beds and all, and I . . ."

"You don't want the responsibility," he said. "Well, I don't blame you. How about the girls? Why don't you talk it over with them?"

"They've said he shouldn't go. Where are they?"

"Search me. They were right here ten minutes ago. I was asking Mr. Johnson about number six."

"What?"

"The road."

"What road?"

"Concentrate," said Fred. "You know when you drive a car? Well, you pick a road."

"I'm sorry." Alice went over to the telephone that stood

on a little stand back in the portion of the hall below the stairs. ''I don't suppose there's more than one doctor in a town IDce this, do you?"

"If there's one," said Fred, "they're lucky."

Alice picked up the phone. When the operator answered she said, "Operator, can you give me the name of a doctor in ... in Ogaunee?"

"I beg you pardon," squeaked the operator.

"A doctor. I want the name of a doctor. I'm in Ogau-

nee."

"You mean Dr. Follett?" said the voice, suddenly human and sounding as if it were chewing gum.

"I guess I do," said Alice. "Can you connect me with his number?"

"Sure," the operator said.

"Miss Brennan," said Fred softly, ''you are sticking your neck out, if I may be so bold.''

They heard Innes calling, faindy, beyond the closed sliding doors.

A voice on the phone said, "Yes?" with a great patience.

"Dr. Follett? This is Alice Brennan speaking. I am at the Whitlock house."

The voice said, "Yes?'' very cautiously. Fred slipped into the sitting room, and Alice thanked him with her eyes.

"Mr. Innes Whitlock is here," she said crisply into the phone, "and he has been quite ill. I wonder if you could come and have a look at him?" "Who is this speaking?"

"Alice Brennan. I am with Mr. Whitlock. I am his . . . secretary," Alice said desperately. "Please come if you can, Doctor. Because Mr. Whitlock wants to drive on to his camp, and I'm not sure he ought to try it" "I see. You wish me to come there?" "Yes, of course,'' she said impatiently. "Do you know where we are? The Whitlock house. It's on a hill." Silence sung on the wire for a moment "Yes, I know," the voice said finally. "Very well." "Thaok you," Alice said with relief. She hung up the phone, looked at her watch. Eight o'clock. It might be sticking her neck out, as Fred had said; but she had a

strong feeling that this was no time to be passive, that it would be dangerous to keep her mouth shut and swallow her own opinions. The sisters thought he ought not to go. It was only Innes who insisted. And if she, Alice, kept still and let him have his way, she could see very plainly how her acquiescence would be open to blame if anything happened.

Besides, she resented illness, in herself and in others. She was impatient with it, and she had no confidence in her ability to take care of Innes if he should become violently ill again on some lonely road. The whole situation annoyed her very much.

How, she wondered, could a little veal in a meat loaf make anybody as sick as that? And how could a man susceptible to such a reaction eat meat loaf without asking what was m it? And, for that matter, how could those who knew his idiosyncrasy have the bad judgment to feed him veal, ever? Alice did a littie pacing up and down.

Presently the front door opened and Isabel came in, followed by a stranger, a dimipling of a little old woman, with pink cheeks and white hair, exactly like a character out of a book of fairy tales. She wore a shabby black coat over a cotton print dress and a velvet hat on the back of her head like a halo. She looked as if she had come in a hurry.

So did Isabel. "How's Innes?" She imwound her shawl with twisting shoulders.

"Better, I guess." Alice smUed uncertainly at the stranger.

"Well, Susan, you'd better see him and try to tell him he must stay here."

"I do agree with you. Miss Isabel," said Alice quickly.

The litde old woman said in a matter-of-fact voice, "You must be Alice."

"Yes, I'm Alice Brennan." Isabel, with queer discourtesy, had gone back to the closet under the stairs to put her shawl away.

"I'm so glad to meet you. Especially if you're going to marry my son."

''Sion!" Alice was so utterly astonished that she staggered.

Isabel said, "Susan was my father's second wife and In-

nes's mother, of course." She seemed aggrieved that there should be any surprise about it.

"I'm s-sorry,'' Alice stammered. "I really didn't know you lived here." Or anywhere, she might have added.

''I live in. a cottage part way down," said Ihnes's mother placidly. She made no move to take her hat and coat off. She was quite obviously transient here, not at home m the Whitlock house. "I'm so happy that you thought to call me, Isabel. Not only because of Innes." She smiled at the girl.

Alice smiled back, with reservations. There seemed to be nothing wrong with Innes's mother. She was whole of limb. Her eyes were bright and intelligent. She had a sweet and vigorous voice. The extraordinary pink cheeks were real, not painted. She looked a thoroughly pleasant old lady, but Alice was a burnt child and she was wary. She said nothing.

Fred opened the sliding doors. "Miss Brennan . . .'' Then his whole face warmed and glowed with smiling welcome. "Oh, hello, Mrs. Innes."

"Hello, Fred," said Susan. "How are you?''

"Fine. Just fine."

"And how's your mother?" she said, passing through the doors in front of him.

"She's fine, thank you," Fred said. "Just fine." The doors slid together.

Alice felt suddenly lonely and cold.

"Was that Susan Innes?" Gertrude's voice, lyrical with surprise, came to them from the back of the hall. The tall thin form moved with her swaying walk, toward them. She wore no coat but something cool and fresh that clung around her and reached Alice's senses, made her sure that Gertrude had been out of doors.

"Yes," said Isabel briefly. "I went to get her."

"Whatever for?" said Gertrude.

"Because Innes thinks he will drive to his camp, in his state, and he really must not," Isabel said. "He really must not."

"He certainly ought not," Gertrude said. "Susan, however . . . Miss Brennan, I really think you are the one best able to persuade him."

With a start, Alice realized that her presence was

known to the blind woman. "I've tried," she said. "As a matter of fact, IVe called the doctor."

"Doctor!" cried Isabel.

"Yes. Dr. FoUett."

''Child," Gertrude said in a moment, "child, what have you done?"

"Fve . . . called the doctor," Alice said in another moment. She kept her voice matter-of-fact, but she was getting angry.

"Oh, dear," said Isabel. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear."

"We do not call Dr. Follett," Gertrude said. "Never. You ought to have asked. He can't be coming. Not here."

"But he is coming," Alice mamtained stoutly, "or so he said. And I'm sorry, but I do not understand."

"No. Of course, you couldn't," said Gertrude with surprising indulgence. "Nevertheless it is . . . well ... Of course"—she drew herself up stiffer if possible— ''we did not call."

"If he's coming," said Isabel, "we must warn Maud."

"Where is Maud?"

"I haven't the famtest idea," said Alice. "Nor have you the faintest idea how annoying all this mystery is to me." She spoke angrily. Then she held her breath for their reaction.

Isabel's eyes shifted. "My dear Alice," she complained, "it's so awkward. Of course you couldn't know, my dear. When Maud was younger she and Dr. Follett. . . Well, he was her suitor. . . ."

"Dr. Follett," said Gertrude in her cool tinkling voice, "went away on what we supposed was a vacation. He married another woman and brought her here to Ogaunee. Of course, we have had no communication with him since."

"I see," said Alice gravely, although she wanted to laugh. "How long ago was this. Miss Whitlock?"

"It was in 1917," Gertrude said, as if time stood still for her and this was just the other day.

"But what do you do for a doctor?"

"Oh, Dr. Gunderson is only eleven miles away," said Isabel. "Really, Alice, you ought to have asked. How dreadful for Maud, for all of us."

Maud was approaching through the dining room. That tread, at once quick and heavy, was the unmistakable con-

comitant of her waddling gait. She came through the door in a moment, shapeless in a dark cloak. She too, had been out of doors. Alice idly wondered where and why.

Isabel spoke to her on the swift fingers of her only hand. Alice watched the pale heavy face, waiting for news to seep through to whatever brain worked behind those little pig eyes that blinked once or twice, but remained fastened on the fingers. She saw the face change, grow sly. The loose hps fell open in a queer smile. The eyes sharpened. Surely the expression was that of anticipation and imholy joy.

Maud said, in her chest tones, "Is that so?"

Isabel's hand worked madly.

"Aw, let him come," said Maud.

"She must not see him," said Gertrude sharply. "She must go upstairs at once." Her voice rang with command. Maud looked planted there on her two Siick stems. Gertrude struck her on the shoulder with her forefinger. Her blind face was imperious.

Then came the doorbell, and the three sisters scuttled out of the hall. Gertrude picked up her skirts and sailed through the parlor toward her own room, with majestic certainty and uncanny speed. Isabel climbed the stairs, pushing Maud before her. Maud, who went up with her face turned backward, reluctant, thoroughly uncoy, per-fecdy wUling to risk an encounter with the man in her life. But she let Isabel hurry her past the table that stood just behind the railing on the edge of the stairwell, and around the comer of an upstairs wall.

They were gone. Alice stood alone, at the foot of the stairs, half exasperated, half relieved.

Dr. Follet was about sixty years old, she guessed, a dignified and rather pordy fellow with a bald head and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. His face was pink and talcumed. His neat tan suit was smooth over his robinlike contours. He sent forth a faint clean aroma, antiseptic and comforting. He acted as if he had resolved to do his duty precisely.

He kept his eyes on her face and his head nodding while he listened to her account of the disaster that had overtaken Innes Whitlock. He said, when she had finished, "Thank you, Miss Brennan, that's very helpful. Now where is the patient?"

Alice knocked on the sliding doors and then began to draw them back. Someone helped from the other side. It was Fred.

Innes was still lying on the sofa, looking very pale, scarcely able to Uft his head. His mother sat in a chair, pulled up close, and she now rose to make room for the doctor.

"Ah," said Dr. Follett, "how are you, Susan?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she said. "Just fine. And you, doctor?"

Again Alice felt imreasonably lonely to be left out of a whole world of people who kept saying, "Fine. Just fine," to each other.

Fred had gone. "Would you rather I went away?'' asked Alice.

"No, no," Innes said. "Doctor, this is Miss Brennan, my fiancee."

"Ah," said Dr. Follett, "she told me she was your secretary." In here, safe from the Whitlock girls, he was less businesslike. He looked benignly at Alice through the upper half of his glasses.

"The thing is that I must get along to my camp, doctor," Innes said fretfully. "The object of this whole trip. I never meant to stop here at all. But now Alice has got it into her head to worry about me." Alice wondered who had told him. "Fred says she won't let me go until you've seen me. She's being very bossy." He used his httle-boy voice and his pout, but she realized that he was much pleased. The role of an anxious sweetheart hadn't occurred to her, but here it was, ready and waiting.

"Naturally," said the doctor. "And quite right, too. Now . . .''

Susan Innes Whitlock drew Alice to a far comer of the room. They sat down with their backs to the men. "Innes has been telling me. I'm so happy about you. I've hoped he would find somebody. And I do think you were very wise to make him see the doctor."

"Thaitk you," said Alice, feeling a little ashamed. "But IVe upset his sisters."

"Oh, dear me, I'd forgotten." Susan looked concerned. "But I'm glad," she said, "and I think you were right" She patted Alice's hand with a kind of indignant support "Why did Fred call you Mrs. Innes?" blurted Alice. "If I shouldn't ask, please just say so. But rU go on making mistakes if I don't ask questions."

"Of course," said Susan sympathetically. "You must be wondering. It's only because they are the Misses Whidock, you see, and after their father died and I moved into the cottage. . . . Well, it seemed better not to confuse everybody."

Alice shook her head as if to convince herself that this explained anything.

"It's hard for you to understand, I know," Susan said. "But they never thought I quite measured up to Sophia, you see."

"Why not?" said Alice bluntly. "Because I was in service here." "Oh."

Susan's eyes, that had been watching, relaxed into thoughtfulness. "Stephen always did exactly as he pleased, but I'm afraid it was pretty hard on the girls. They had just come back from Europe, too." She sighed. "Well, that was long ago."

"I wish Innes had taken me to your house," Alice said impulsively.

"I wish so, too. Perhaps he will, someday. Or, at least you must come."

There it was, something unsure, between Innes and his mother. But Ahce liked her. Her instinct was stubborn about that.

Now the doctor was helping Innes to his feet. "He says," called Innes in a pleased voice, "that I will be just as imcomfortable in the car as anywhere else. So we'll go along."

"Is it really all right?" Alice was anxious. "I think so," the doctor said. "He has gotten rid of whatever poisoned him. He will feel weak, of course. And he had better stick to liquids for a day or so. He tells me

"Tell Fred, will you, dear?" Innes wobbled. "Good-by mother."

Alice watched them. Susan patted his sleeve, reaching out from a little distance, as if she dared not come closer. Innes was uncomfortable. Alice already knew him well enough to be sure of that. He was not at ease with his mother.

Alice went with the doctor out into the hall.

Fred was there. "You can put my bag in the car," she told him. "We're going ahead."

Her bag was already at his feet. Fred picked it up and went out

The doctor said, "Good-by, Miss Brennan."

"I'm grateful to you for coming," Alice said, "and I must apologize if I've embarrassed you. I didn't know. But I'm very glad you came. And I do thank you."

The doctor's eyes showed an imexpected twinkle. "Quite all right, Miss Brennan. Ill send a bill." He looked slyly around the hall. The velvet curtains to the parlor had been drawn, covering the opening and shutting them in. "Where are they?" His lips barely moved.

Alice shrugged and felt her dimpb surge into her cheek as it did when she suppressed a smile.

The doctor said, "Well, this has been an adventure. Now I think I'll just take Susan home."

Susan and Innes came through the sliding doors. He walked without her help, but he looked ghastly. "I think .. ." he said, ". . . excuse me."

He wobbled off down the hall. There was a bathroom back there, across the far end of it, connecting both into the hall and to Gertrude's room, behind the parlor. Innes went in and closed the door.

"Good-by, Alice." Alice kissed her mother-in-law to be. The old lady's cheek was soft and fragrant. Dr. Follett gathered Susan under his wing and left.

Alice looked up the stairs. Beyond the railing up there she could see only the table and the big old-fashioned kerosene lamp with the flower-painted china shade that stood on it. No one was visible. The velvet curtains hung straight at her right. All was quiet. Dignified, haughty, withdrawn, invisible, the three Whitlock girls made no sign.

She picked up her hat from the hall table and turned to the mirror. She heard Fred outside; she heard the bathroom door open, and Innes's footsteps, sounding firmer. Then Fred was in at the front door. Still looking at herself in the glass, Alice knew quite well that Innes was part way down the hall to her left and that Fred was close to her, at the right. That the comings and goings were part of the rhythm of their departure. She felt no alarm, nothing.

But the hall exploded with soimd and movement. She felt Fred move like a streak, heard him cry out, and then crash. She turned to see Innes huddled against the dioing-room wall with Fred's body holding him there, and the ruins of the big kerosene lamp scattered on the floor. A broken piece of the china shade gyrated slowly toward her and settled down at her feet. For what seemed like minutes, they stood as if they were all paralyzed in their places. Then Alice ran, stumbling, toward the men.

"Hang onto him, will you?" Fred took the stairs two at a time. Alice put herself where Fred had been and heard Innes's breathing, loud and gasping and broken in rhythm.

"Are you hurt? Did it hurt you?"

He couldn't answer except by shaking his head ever so slightly.

Fred came pounding down. "Nobody up there. What the hell happened?"

"It fell," Alice said stupidly.

"I don't see how it could."

"But it fell."

"Did you hear anything?"

"I heard it fall."

"No. Afterward?"

Alice shook her head. "What do you mean?"

"I dunno," Fred said uneasily. "I thought ... it was upstairs."

They were talking fast, almost in whispers. Now Innes stirred.

"Is ever3rthing in the car?" he said with sudden strength.

"You'd better rest," warned Alice. "Good heavens, that was an awful shock. I . . . I'm shaking."

Fred kicked the metal lamp base.

"Doctor," Alice said to him, aside, and he gave her a look and went swiftly away.

Alice wished afterward that she had not urged Innes back into the sitting room, but she did, and got him seated. She was afraid he might be sick again, but color had come back to his face and he looked somewhat better.

"What on earth"—Gertrude was holding her hand to her heart in the dooray—"crashed so? Innes, are you there?" She seemed to have lost her sure sense of her surroundings in the excitement.

"It was the lamp falling," Alice said. "It's all right. No one was hurt. Miss Whitlock."

"What a dreadful crash!" she said.

"The lamp's broken." Isabel stood beside her, edging, with her tendency to go sidewise, through ahead of her. Her complaining voice seemed to hold a little anger. "Mama's big lamp from the upstairs table. I was in the kitchen. Josephine has gone out!"—as if this were outrage. "What happened, Alice?"

"I really don't know. Miss Isabel," Alice said shortly.

"Innes . . . ?"

Innes said, "It didn't hit me. So it's aU right."

"What's going on?" Maud's masculine tones broke in upon them. "Say, who busted the lamp? It's all over the floor."

Everybody shrugged.

Maud looked at Innes with her sly little eyes. "You feeling better?" she said.

"I feel much better," Innes said vigorously. "A little shock like that seems to have been just what I needed. Where's Fred? I feel much stronger. We must go."

"He . . ." Alice began and stopped, for Fred was back; and since he told her with a glance that he had missed the Doctor, she saw no reason to upset the Misses Whitlock again. "Here he is, now. But are you sure you're all right, Innes?"

"Yes," said Innes, "I'm all right."

Josephine came into view in the hall, wearing her coat, with a newspaper-wrapped package held across her body like a shield. Stie looked dazed.

"Where have you been?" wailed Isabel.

But Innes got jerkily up and blundered across the room.

''Good-by, Gertrude, Maud, Isabel. Thanks for everything. I'll write you. But remember"—he spoke rapidly as that he can be quite comfortable at this camp. And you will be with him, Miss Brennan."

"Yes," said Alice doubtfully. She felt unselfish devotion was being put upon her.

if to get this said before his strength failed—"about the accounts. I meant that. I'll send a man up from the office. He'll go over everything with you. Mind you show him everything. And I must have your powers of attorney. Thanks, agam. Good-by."

Alice said, "Good-by." She smiled valiantly at Isabel and Maud. Gertrude's hand she pressed briefly. It was a sketchy leave-taking on her part, and although she seemed caught up in Innes's fervor to get away and therefore rushed and pressed by his hurry, the brevity of her farewells was her own idea.

She felt she'd had enough of the Whitlock sisters.

The Whitlock girls did not stand on the doorstep to wish their guests Godspeed. The tall front doors closed. The tall facade was a pale mask in the dark. Fred helped Innes into the tonneau and wrapped him well.

"The air in your face, sir?"

"Yes, that would be good."

Fred turned down the window. Alice felt rather useless. ''Shall I sit in front?" she said, "You want to be quiet, don't you, Innes?"

Innes seemed too exhatisted to do more than murmur consent. But it was consent. He seemed more himself, even in this collapsed state, than he had seemed at any time in his sisters' house. At least he was Innes Whitlock, who knew he didn't want to talk. There he had not been himself nor anything else, but a man looking for a role to act and not finding it.

The car moved away softly, a cradle on wheels for its master.

"She seems to be running sweet again," Alice said. "What was the matter with her, Fred?"

"You wouldn't know if I told you.''

"No. I suppose I wouldn't." Her mind was somewhere else already. "Do you know, Fred, you moved awful fast in there. You were quite a hero."

"Nuts," he said.

"Maybe you saved his life."

"Look," he said, "if you see something's going to faU on somebody unless you push them, you push them. It's a reflex."

"A what?"

"What the hell?" Fred said. Alice wiggled herself back in the seat as they drifted gently down the hilL

"How do we go? Over that pit?"

"Yup. Have to, to get on number six."

"I hope we go over it faster than we came." Alice shivered.

The car answered her, picking up speed. Ogaunee street lights were few and far between, and dim at that. They turned left, away from Main Street, where they had never yet been. Innes was a limp bimdle behind them. Alice felt a pricking of her nerves and a wish to get over the pit and on the highway, settled into their pace and done with Ogaunee. She scarcely saw what they were passing. She was listening for the hum of power, trying to recapture the mood for distance and the free feeling of being on the way to somewhere else.

Fred's arm went across in front of her like an iron bar.

"Watchit!" With his other hand he spun the wheel. The car's nose turned and tilted. They were headed for the stars. The brakes screamed. Only Fred's arm kept Alice out of the windshield. The car stalled, shivered. Something hit Alice on the back of her head. She heard a crash, like an echo, without any sense of pressure. Then the night was still, for a moment.

People's voices. Feet running. Weight on her back. Fred was swearing monotonously. Alice reahzed that she wasn't hurt, that the weight on her back was Innes, flung like a sack over the back of the front seat. He had been lying limp, and the sudden stop had flung him forward like a stone out of a sling. Fred was lifting him away.

Somehow or other Alice found herself kneeling on the tilted floor of the tonneau, wiping a trickle of blood from

Innes's chin. His eyes were open, but he didn't speak and seemed nearly unconscious. People had come out of the quiet town like worms out of the ground after a rain. They were milling around the car. Out of all their voices Alice heard one thread of talk, loud and clear, as if the audible equivalent of a spotlight were on it

A man said, "How'd they miss the turn? Musta missed the turn, didn't they?"

"Say, you shouldn't come down here, driver. This road's been closed off."

Fred's angry voice: "Why in hell don't you put up a sign, then?"

"Whatdya mean? There's a sawhorse across the end."

"There is, eh?"

"Detour. That's what it says."

"Yeah?"

''This road goes off into the pit."

Fred said sarcastically, "That's why I stopped, bud."

"Good thing you stopped," somebody said.

"Show me that sign."

A woman said in Alice's ear, "Is he hurt, dear? Are you hurt, dear? The doctor's coming. How do you feel dear?" Alice shook her head. The voice receded.

Some man said in an excited way, "Say, the sawhorse ain't across the road now."

"Where is it?"

"It's across the main road!"

"What? What did he say?"

"Somebody moved the sign."

"The detour sign?"

"Yeah, moved it. Put it across the main road."

"For God's sake! Who done that?"

"Some fool kids ..."

"Say, that's dangerous!"

"Who'd do a thing like that?"

"They mighta been killed!"

"Yessir, that's dangerous."

"Might have gone right over."

"He don't know the road."

"Pretty near did."

"Might have been killed!"

"Whoever done a thing like that?"

"What was they trying to do?" somebody said in a high indignant voice, "kill somebody?"

Alice looked up. Fred was standing silently beside the car. She felt as if she had a hmidred things to say to him, and none of them were necessary. She smiled feebly. The world shook down, became a litde less chaotic. Soon the doctor came.

Innes was damaged—three ribs. The car was not, except for a crumpled fender that had touched a fence. Fred maneuvered it away from the pit, on the brink of which it hung. And it went back up the hill to the Whitlock house, carrying Innes, carrying Alice, back again.

Inside, the Whitlock girls were sitting in the parlor. Josephine, who was sweeping up the last of the glass fragments from the hall, sent curious glances in their direction. It was not then- custom to sit together in the evening. It was unusual to see all three of them sitting together Hke that, unless there was an argument or something. She guessed they were still thinking about Mr. Innes's being here and the doctor and all. Because they weren't talking. They never did talk much to each other. It took somebody from outside to start their tongues. Usually, the minute the outsider was gone, they fell apart, each sister into her own mind, kind of. They were apart now, but it was funny the way they kept on sitting in there, all three of them. Josephine felt puzzled and groped for what puzzled her.

When the two cars came. Dr. Follett's following, Gertrude heard them first.

She said, "Is that the car?" Her voice lilted. Josephine sat back on her haunches, turning her round eyes toward the door.

Isabel said, with quick, nervous attention, "That sounds like Innes!"

Maud's eyes ran from one to the other and then to Josephine's listening pose in the hall.

"What's the matter? Anything happen?" she said. Her tongue came out to touch her lower lip.

Josephine couldn't help feeling that something, somehow, had taken the edge off the surprise.

Fred and the doctor got Innes upstairs. The upper hall of the Whitlock house ran around two sides of the stairwell, and another branch went toward the front of the house near the bathroom door. K you turned to the left at the top of the stairs, passed a door, then an old-fashioned mahogany chest of drawers against the wall, you came to a second door which led to a room over the kitchen wing, a large room with tliree sides to the weather, that had been Stephen Whitlock's own. Papa's room, they called it. It was furnished as it had been for him, full of enormous pieces. The big bed was mahogany, with solid ends. The curviQg headboard towered high. Here they put Innes. The room was chilly. Isabel sent Mr. Johnson to do something about the heat. She, herself, kicked open the register in the floor.

Dr. Follett paid no attention to the three sisters. Isabel was twittering, Gertrude stiff, Maud a solid lump in the door. He set to work on his patient. Alice found herself trembling in reaction. She asked if they shouldn't send for his mother.

Gertrude said, "Yes, of course. The telephone is in the hall, my dear. Tell me, Alice, does he look bad?"

"Yes. He looks dreadful," Alice said with a mean desire to shock her. The pale woman closed her colorless eyes. Alice passed Maud in the doorway. Maud was watching the doctor. Her gaze licked at his busy back. She was grinning.

AMce went down stairs, clinging to the railing. Josephine was on her way from the fitchen with a kettle and a basin. She told Ahce one had only to ask the operator. So Alice asked. After she had spoken to Susan Innes, she sat down on the bottom step. What a mess! Fred passed her, coming down. He put his hand on her shoulder for a second.

"O.K?"

"I'm shaking like a leaf," she said. "Where are you going?"

"Doc wants his bag."

"I guess we'll stay here, won't we?"

"Looks like it."

"It's funny," Alice said "I had a premonition."

"Yeah. So did I."

Alice rested her head against the banister while he was briefly gone. She thought to herself that Innes, ill,

belonged to his family. After all, she had contracted for an Innes in full health. It was annoying of him to keep getting hurt, one way or another. Innes was a nuisance. When Fred came in with the doctor's bag, the doctor's voice at the head of the stairs called down.

"Can you run down to my office and get a few things my wife will have ready?"

"Sure." Fred was cheerful and unshaken enough to run errands.

"Tell her the bottom drawer. Ask anybody where I Hve."

"I'll find it. You want diis, don't you?"

"I'll take the bag up," Alice said crossly, dragging herself to her feet She thought angrily: Well, if I have to be cheerful and a pillar of strength, O.K., O.K.

'Thanks," Fred said carelessly. He put the bag down and went off. He didn't see why she shouldn't be cheerful and strong. That was annoying, too. People of his class, Alice thought meanly, have no nerves.

Then Susan Innes came panting in. She was an old lady, and she'd climbed the hill too fast. Her face was pinker than ever. She was all hot and upset. She was an old darling, AHoe thought, poor lamb, all hot and bothered. So Alice found herself saying soothing words and helping her upstairs. As the old lady's weight fell on her arm, Alice felt cool and strong. Well, I'm young, she thought, damn it.

They mounted into what seemed like a crowd, through which the doctor came directly to Susan. "He's going to be aU right. Nothing to worry about. He's very nervous, of course. I'll soon strap him up and hell have a little phenobarbital and go off to sleep. Be feeling much better by tomorrow. Now, Susan . . ."

Susan said, "Where is he, doctor?''

She went with him to her son.

Alice found herself facing the Whitlock girls, who stood almost in a line. There was Isabel, fumbling at the neck of her dress with her sharp-nailed left hand. There was Gertrude, stiff and tall, locked in her colorless world of sound. There was Maud, fat ankles wide apart, her mad garment hanging every which way, her eyes shifting busily from Alice to her sisters. She looked as if thought were running

in her head like a squirrel in its cage. Alice tossed her own head and marched mto the bedroom. She crossed toward the big bed. Susan was bending there. Her voice murmured like a lullaby.

The doctor said, "My bag?"

"Oh, gosh," said AUce. "I forgot. YU. get it."

The house was confused. Alice was confused. Her mind seemed unable to seize upon and foUow out a thread of action. Susan's coming had made her forget the bag. Now, as she went out of the room again, she forgot the sisters. They were gone. They had melted away like a chorus whose turn was over. But Alice forgot them.

She paused to try to pull herself together. I might as well, she thought, for all the notice I get. Be cool. Be strong. Perhaps it was a question of doing one thing at a time. First, get the doctor's bag. Then ask what more she could do. Stop floating around like a fool. Stop being batted this way and that. Take stock. What happens next? She put one foot in front of the other, deliberately taking thought to do so. She started for the head of the stairs.

It was just at that moment that she heard the soimd. The house was full of sound, of course. Behind her, in the sickroom, she could hear the doctor's voice and Susan's. From somewhere came the soimd of running water. There was movement on the floor below, faint sounds of walking. Yet this one new sound seemed to echo alone in the isolated quiet of the hall in which she stood. It came from below, she thought.

An odd soimd. A queer little chuckle in the throat. A little caw of excitement. It was a sound no one would make on purpose. She felt that it came directly from thought. Spontaneous. Unconscious. There was voice behind it, even though it was less a voice than a stirring in the throat. It was queer.

Alice came to the head of the stairs and started down. She found nobody there, in the downstairs hall. She picked up the doctor's bag and took it back with her. One thing at a time.

Innes was talking. He must be in pain. Ifis ribs hurt him. He had come out of the dazed state, and he was talking in a high-pitched, frantic voice. Alice closed the door

with enough violence to make a noise, and the doctor and Susan looked around at her.

Innes said, "I mean it, doctor. I'm afraid. Alice, is that Alice? Come here, dear. Don't leave me. Where's Fred?"

"I don't know," she said. "How do you feel now?"

"It's not so bad," he said. His face was wet, though. "I don't want to stay here. Tell him to let us go. Alice, tell him."

"Go!" Alice said, astonished. "Why, Innes, you can't go driving around the country with your ribs broken."

"I can't stay here. I'm afraid to. Don't you see?"

"But why?"

"Because I'm afraid," he said with shrill stubbornness. "All right, it's silly zmd they're women and I know all that. But I'm afraid and I don't care. I can't help it." His voice cracked and he looked at Alice desperately.

Susan said, "Could he be moved down to my house, doctor?"

"Oh, yes," said Alice. "Why didn't we think . . ."

"You haven't room," Innes said despairingly. "Don't be silly, mother. You know you haven't room."

"I could make room," Susan said stoutly. "You might have my bed, and my paying guest would just have to go somewhere else. I think he would, Innes. Then Alice could come too, after tomorrow."

The plan hung in the air and fell through. Alice knew, all of a sudden, that it wouldn't happen. How explain it? How could she stay here in this house one night, and Innes elsewhere? What about Fred? It seemed unreasonable to move Innes now. It was unreasonable. There was no reason for it, just a feeling. A feeling wasn't enough for such a reshuffling of people.

The doctor said quietly, "You had better stay right in that bed, Whitlock. I wouldn't advise anything else. You're nervous and no wonder. Here, get these down."

He made Innes swallow two pills and handed the small white pillbox to Alice. "Keep lUm warm. He may have a chill. And give him two of these . . . oh . . . every three hours. Can you attend to that. Miss Brennan?"

"Of course," Alice said. "Do you mean in the night, too?"

"No, no; not if he sleeps. If he's awake and restless."

"ru attend to it," she said.

Susan said "Now, Innes, if you'd like me to stay here, I will I can make myself comfortable right in that chair."

"No, thank you, mother.''

Alice felt the slap as it went to Susan.

But Susan said cheerfully, "Well, I'm glad you're no worse I'll get along them." She patted his hand and turned toward the door with the doctor.

Alice sat down in a straight chair beside the bed. She couldn t understand Innes and his mother when they were together. There was something sad and wrong about them.

"You won't leave me, Alice?" 

He looked ridiculously boyish in his pajamas, like a little old boy with a mustache. He looked weak and scared. Thoroughly scared. He twitched with it.

"What is it, Innes? What makes you afraid?"

Innes swallowed. "It's Gertrude "

"Gertrude?"

"You don't know. And people forget. But she never forgot. Alice, it was my fault she went blind." 

"Oh, no! What do you mean?"

"I was only about seven years old, and they told me to hold the horse. Well, I didn't. I was only a child. I didn't realize. Besides how could any one know what was going to happen? The horse ran with her in the buggy. Threw her. She was sick for a long time. After that, she was blind. She always blamed me. I knew that. Everybody did. Father tned to be kind, but he blamed me, too. I always felt that. Mother didn't. She thought I was too young to be blamed for anything, but, of course, she didn't count" 

Why not? thought Alice.

"They all blamed me. Gertrude blames me to this day. Naturally her life was ruined. I suppose if I'd done what I was told It wouldn't have happened. I don't know. But I've always known she'd like to hurt me, Alice. I know that."

Alice felt his forehead. Surely he was feverish.

"Try to go to sleep," she said. "Is there anything you want?"

"No, no, the doctor isn't through with me. How can I sleep? I want Fred. Alice, you'll stay by me, won't you? You and Fred?"

"Of course," said Alice. "Don't worry about it, Innes. Well be here."

"Don't let Gertrude come in," he whispered, and subsided into a silent drowsy state.

Alice sat still. She tried to think of Gertrude, the pale woman, as a young girl with eyes. But she couldn't. A long past, locked in Innes's memory. A long past she'd never imderstand, though now guilt, sown into Innes as a boy, had pushed forth from the old roots, bearing fear for its fruit.

When the doctor came back, Fred was with him, carrying things. The doctor preferred to manage alone, so they went to stand outside the door.

Alice said, "He wants you and me to stick around. He's scared."

"That so?" Fred lounged against the wall.

"You don't seem surprised."

"That's because I'm not," Fred said.

"Well, of course he's had the darnedest luck . . ."

"Yeah? Doc Follett told me he went over the pit road tonight just after dark. And the detom: sign was in the right place then."

"It probably was," Alice said. "What about it?"

"Well, it's funny, don't you think? Also, what made that lamp fall? I don't know. Do you?"

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Alice.

A door opened at the end of the short branch of the hall. Isabel came out of her room and smiled her half-hoop of tight-lipped smile when she saw them. "Let me just show you where you are to sleep," she said. "Someone has to think of these things. Fred, you must put up with a cot here in the lumber room. Alice, my dear, the little guest room, of course. It's terrible, isn't it? Poor Innes. Poor boy."

Alice's flesh crawled.

"But so lucky," Isabel said. "So lucky you weren't all killed."

''Sure was, Miss Isabel," Fred said. "Dumb luck, that's all"

"I do hope you'll be comfortable," Isabel said with her odd way of running off the subject "This is all so unexpected."

When Dr. Follett left his patient at last and was passing through the hall downstairs on his way home, Maud stopped him. She summoned him mto the sitting room and spoke for some time. She hadn't finished when he came out, pale, with his lips compressed, and made for his car as if the furies pursued him.

8

By eleven o'clock the house was quiet. Innes slept. Alice came quietly away and closed his door. She sat down beside Fred on the top step of the backstairs that ran down just beyond the door to Papa's room, between that room and the one bathroom on that floor. He was just sitting there. Alice was very tired, spent, in fact. But not sleepy. She didn't relish the thought of sleep. The old house was uneasy, and she uneasy m it. It seemed very natural to drop down there beside him. He gave her a cigarette. They talked in whispers, keeping their heads turned, to listen down the hall.

"Gone bye-bye?"

"At last," Alice sighed.

"I wonder what goes on."

Alice moved her head closer. "I started to tell you. He says he's afraid of Gertrude. He says it's his fault she's bhnd. And she'd like to hurt him. That's what he said. It's crazy, isn't it?"

"Gertrude's a queer bird," he said, "and I wouldn't put anything past any of them. They've been holed up here too long."

Alice shivered. The old house was rotten. All around her she felt the atmosphere of decay. Not so much decay of Uie walls or the ceilings, which still held and would hold. But decay in the air, accumulated rubbish in the minds, imaired, unsunned, unclean.

"You don't think he's right to be scared?"

'Tm scared," said Fred.

Alice felt warm gratitude. "Well, thank God you're human." They laughed and she shoved her shoulder

closer. "What are we so scared of?" she asked him.

Fred said slowly, "Innes has got a million bucks.''

"Yes?''

"Well, the girls could use it.''

"But for heaven's sake . . ."

"It's you,'' Fred said.

"Me!''

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"Oh, I see what you're thinking," Alice said slowly. "You think I'm a blow, is that it? Because if I marry Innes, then they won't get so much if he should die."

"Sure,'' said Fred. "And I betcha." He squashed his cigarette on the step with his heel. "How'd they take it? The news, I mean."

Alice looked back in time. "They asked me when."

"Uh huh. See?"

"Yes, but how do they know they'll ever get anything? Why should Innes die? He's younger than they are.''

"Maybe they're going to fix that," Fred said carelessly.

"So that's what we're afraid of?" Alice smiled.

"Must be, I guess."

Alice looked at his face m the dim light. "You think they want him to die quick, before I get hold of the money?"

''They wouldn't mind."

"Maybe they wouldn't mind, but look, Fred, it's sUly, because they haven't done anything. Innes is nervous. Well, he's had a tough time. But what makes you think they did anything at all? God knows I don't like them, I can't stand them, but you're talking about murder."

"Yeah, I guess so. The thing is, I been having a litde chat with Josephine," he said easily. "In the first place, they know damn well he can't eat veal. They know that. Tliey must. Say, even I know it, and I'm only the hired help. Also, they must have known there was veal in that meat loaf. That's right, isn't it?"

"I should thmk so."

"Well, let me tell you it's right, because Josephine knew it and she even told them."

"Oh?''

"She called it to their attention, see?"

"What did they say?"

"They kinda brushed the whole thing off. Except Maud. Of course, she didn't hear what Josephine said. Now, it looks to me as if they wanted Innes to get sick. Why would they want that?"

"I don't know. He wouldn't die from eating veal."

"No, but he'd have to stick around this house, maybe. Where they could get at him."

"Oh, lord . . . Fred!"

"They wanted him to stay, didn't they?"

"Well, of course, but . . ."

"I was just trying to figure . . . Another thing, Josephine was down the road tonight. She went down into town, right after dinner, a few minutes before eight, she says. She went around by the pit road. Where we were, you know?"

"When?"

"Must have been close to eight o'clock. Well, I asked her if she saw anybody monkeying around that sawhorse. She says no, she couldn't see, wasn't specially looking, anyhow. But she heard something. She heard somebody cough. She couldn't describe it very well. Kind of a cough, she said. It made her nervous. Said she ran."

"Ran?"

"Yeah. When the doc went by about seven forty-five, the thing was O.K. Just where it ought to be. Josephine heard that. . . sound down there. By the time we got there, about nine fifteen, it had been moved."

"Sound," said Alice. "Kind of a cough? I wonder . . ."

"Yeah, so do I."

"Because I heard something, Fred."

"You did? I asked you and you said you didn't."

"What?"

"Right after the lamp fell. I asked you if you heard anything."

"But it wasn't then. It was later. After we got back here and had put Innes to bed. You were gone on that errand for the doctor. I was just coming downstairs to get the bag."

"That's funny. When I heard it was right after the lamp fell. It wasn't exactly a cough, though."

"No," Alice said, "it was a chuckle but not really a chuckle."

"A noise . . . like in the throat.''

"Yes. That's it."

"Damn funny."

"Josephine says it was a cough?"

"That's what she said."

"It must have been a funny cough," said Alice, "if she ran." The house creaked. She knew that if she heard that little sound again now, she'd scream in spite of herself.

"Be that as it may," Fred went on, "how come the lamp fell? Answer me that. It's been standing there on that table for years. Tonight it falls off. Falls off and over the railing and nearly beans Brother Innes."

"Did you see anyone?"

"Nobody. I ran up here, remember? Well, I knocked on Maud's door. She's down at the end of the hall you're on. Other side of the stairs. Nobody answered. Naturally. She can't hear knocks. So I Ihought Fd better not open the door because she might be in there in her underwear or something and I dunno if I could stand it"—Alice bit her lip—"so I came around here and knocked on Isabel's door. No answer. So I opened that one. There was nobody in there."

"Then it couldn't have been Isabel."

"Sure it could, " said Fred. "Why not? Doesn't prove anything. Not with these stairs so handy."

Alice was drawn into wondering. "Had they come upstairs? Yes, Isabel pushed Maud up when the doctor came. But it couldn't have been Gertrude."

"Why not? She could have sneaked around and up these stairs if she wanted to. Or go up the front, for that matter."

"But... I was there in the hall nearly the whole time."

"Not the whole time. You were in the sitting room with limes and the doctor and his mother. Mrs. Innes, I mean."

"Yes, that's right. She could have been listening. The curtains were drawn across the parlor. Who drew those curtains, Fred?"

"She did, I guess."

"We don't know where they were." Alice shrugged. "They might have been running up and down stairs, all three of them. But anyhow, it wasn't Susan and ii wasn't the doctor."

"Why should it be Susan?"

"I don't know."

"She's all right," said Fred. "Innes don't like her much. He's ashamed of her. And she don't get mad at him for it and that makes him more ashamed than ever. Of himself' I mean." '

Alice looked at him curiously. "Is that if?" "Sure."

Alice said. "You're quite a psychologist"

"Nuts," Fred said.

"Well, then, how are we doing? If anyone tipped over the lamp on purpose, it was one of the sisters or . . . Josephine?

"No, it wasn't either Josephine. She was out then She got back nght after it fell. She told me. You saw her didn't you?" '

"Yes, I saw her, but if you believe what everybody says..."

"That's where we are," said Fred with sudden grimness. If somebody s trying to murder the boss, we don't want to beheve what people say."

"Fred, we aren't talking about murder. Not really." 

"No? Well, say we're kidding. Anyhow, we know it wasn't you and it wasn't me." 

"I'm glad," said Alice solemnly. 

"So am I." 

They sat silent for a few minutes. It was oddly companionable.

Then Alice said, "Fred, couldn't you see in any windows? I mean, you were out at the car, just before the lamp fell. Was there a light in the rooms upstairs?"

"Sure. The whole house, I think. I did see somebody in the parlor."

"Who? One of the girls?"

"I dunno. Her face was hidden."

Alice sighed. "Another funny thing," Fred said, "they were all gone somewhere just before that, remember? When they were talking about calling the doctor. Where were they?"

"I don't know. But outdoors." 

"You're sure?"

"Yes, I think so. Isabel was. She went down to get Mrs. Innes." Alice bit her finger. "Fred, why did she have to go to get her? Mrs. Iiines has a telephone. I know, because I called her myself."

"Funny," drawled Fred.

"And Gertrude had been outdoors. I could tell. And Maud came in with her cloak on."

"Come into the garden, Maud," Fred said. "Now, where'd they all go to? Not down the road a piece to move that sawhorse, do you suppose?"

"But Fred, how could they plan such a thing? How could they know it would do us any harm?"

"Well, for one thing, I asked Mr. Johnson which route to take right in front of all three of them," Fred said. "And that pit road's not the main road. The main road out of Ogaunee is number ten, that goes by along the railroad tracks. Traffic light's over the pit. Also, probably everybody else around here knows the place where the pit road goes off better than I do. The sawhorse wasn't right across the right road, you know. A driver who was familiar with it would go by without thinking, if he were going from this end, keeping to the right. Only a guy like me, who isn't too sure of his way, especially at night . . . That pit sure yawned," said Fred.

"You must have felt something wrong, or we'd have gone right over."

"Maybe I did," said Fred, without any false modesty. "I can't tell now. But we sure weren't going very fast, or I couldn't have stopped her."

Alice thought a moment. "There's only one thing wrong with the idea that they aU knew which road we'd take."

"What's that?"

"Maud's deaf."

"By gosh, that's right. Could she read our lips?"

"I don't know. But look, Fred, another thing: If she were up here, waiting to push over the lamp, how did she know when to push? It must have been done by sound. And she couldn't have heard Innes come out of the bathroom under the stairs. Not if she's deaf."

"And she couldn't have seen him. That's right," Fred said. "Say, there's more in this than you'd think. Listen, Gertrude's blind. Well, could she read a detour sign? Would she know what it was or what it means, even? How

did she know there was one there? She lost her sight years ago, before there were many cars on the roads around here. I bet she never heard of a detour sign. Or knows how traffic works or the rules of the road. All that is new since she last saw. How could she even guess you could be fooled in the dark? No, Gertrude couldn't have moved that sawhorse."

"Could Isabel, with only one arm?"

''It was dragged," said Fred. "I'd say she could if she wanted to bad enough.''

"Then it was Isabel," said Alice.

"Look"—Fred turned a wrinkled brow—"suppose old Maud thought it was the doctor coming out of the bathroom. Maybe she's got it in for the doctor."

"How could she think that? She couldn't hear hhn any better than she could have heard Innes. She wouldn't know anyone was coming."

"But Gertrude could have dumped the lamp."

"Could have ain't did," Alice said wryly. "You know, we're making this up."

"Well, it's been fun," Fred said, grinning.

Alice looked down at his feet. "Where did you play football, Fred?"

"University of Michigan."

"What's your last name?"

"Bitoski."

|'Oh," said Alice, "so that's who you are."

"Football's a great game," Fred said, stretching. "Got me two gold teeth and a college education. Better get some sleep, eh?" He helped her up.

Alice lay a long time on the hard bed in the little guest room with her eyes open in the dark. In Ogaunee night was untroubled by the lights of man. It came down dark and tight around the house, and for aU Alice kept telling herself there was no menace in it, she was a lone time going to sleep.

In the morning she dragged herself up early. After all, she was a nurse now. She had to look after Innes. "It

looks," she said to her cross and sleepy face in the mirror, "as if I'm damned well going to earn my million dollars."

She found Innes awake and fretful, and Fred with him.

Fred said, "Good morning. Miss Brennan."

"Alice, my dear," said Innes. He held his brow up to be kissed, and Alice kissed it, feeling like a fool. Innes was full of agitation. His face was busy and sly with worries. "Alice, Fred has been pointing out something I hadn't considered. Is the door tight? See, will you? Josephine's gone for my breakfast. I don't want her to overhear."

•The door's tight. What's the matter?"

"Fred says they're upset because of our engagement."

"Oh, dear," said Alice. "Fred, you shouldn't have talked about that. Innes, I don't think you ought to brood, really I don't We had an accident. That's aU."

"Maybe." Innes began to speak rapidly, spilling out his words. "But you don't realize what happened last night You don't see the significance. But my sisters do. Lx>ok, dear, when my father died he divided his money, which was rather a lot, evenly among the four of us. Witfi a little to my mother, of course. Anyway, the girls elected to stay here and maintain the house just as it had always been, and I went off with mine to Chicago. I was twenty-one then and anxious to get away. After all, there was nothing for me to do here. I did ... pretty well in Chicago. But the girls, of cotirse, just used the money they had. Gertrude lets the bank manage hers. She scrapes along on the income. It's not bad, you know. But of course she never increases her capital. Never has.

"Maud is a fool with money. She simply spends it. And Isabel manages to lose a great deal because she always hangs onto everything she buys, and she will not take her losses. She never gives up. Anybody with a business mind knows there's no use hanging on when the investment goes bad. But Isabel hangs on. And because she doesn't Imow how to cut her losses, she gets into trouble. Well, what happens is that sooner or later they are all living on Gertrude's income. And I have to step in and straighten them out again.

"I've done it and done it And I've threatened to stop. I mean it, too. There's no reason for the same thing to happen again and again. It's ridiculous." Alice sensed a cold,

thin thread of shrewdness in Innes when he spoke about money. "I have no more patience with it. I intend to stop stepping in and taking all their losses myself. If they are incompetent to manage, I must manage for them. You heard me speak of it. But you don't realize that they know I meant it."

Innes raised his silly chin. 'Tve made threats before. This time I think they sensed my determination."

"What of it?" murmured Alice, with baUoon-pricking impulses.

"What of it! Don't you see? I'm not a source of income to them, aUve, any more."

"Innes, that's horrible!" she said. "You shouldn't think of your sisters so . .. why should you?"

"I can't help it. I do," he said childishly. Then his voice went an octave down. "I think of Gertrude. If it isn't the money, then she's . . . she's determined I shan't be happy. Why should I pretend, Alice? Their mother was odd. They're odd. I'm afraid."

ffis hand reached out, but Alice folded her arms. "All right. You're afraid. We'll go on from there."

His eyes fell. "You despise me," he murmured.

Alice said clearly, "Not necessarily. If we're not going to pretend, I'm afraid of them myself. I don't hke your sisters, Innes."

He looked merely grateful. "Neither do I," he whispered.

Fred moved away.

"Well, what shall we do about it?" Alice said.

"I want you to wire Killeen."

Blood rushed into her face. She could feel it. She was startled and dismayed.

"I want you to take the car while Fred stays here and run down to the telegraph office. It's in the railroad station. Wire Killeen. I'll give you his address."

"I know his address," said Alice with stiff lips.

"Tell him to hop a train and come right up here. Right away."

"But, Innes, why?" He mustn't come, she was thmking.

"I want to change my wiQ," Innes said, pursing his lips stubbornly. "I want to leave my money to you, Alice."

"But—"

"So I can live long enough to marry you," he said savagely.

"Very well," she said. "Just as you wish, Innes." She marched out of the bedroom.

Fred was after her. "Here are the keys," he said. "She's got no gear shift, you know."

"I know," Alice said. Her eyes were full of angry tears. She felt abused and sorry for herself.

"Fd go," Fred said, "but he wants me to stay here. I guess I'm promoted to bodyguard." Alice took the keys. "Look," Fred said.

"You better go back to your bodyguarding."

She wanted to strike out and hurt somebody. Fred would do. Fred and his sympathy.

A little later she drove the big car down the hill, handling it delicately," because she was unused to it. The town of Ogaunee was depressing—shiftless, she thought; shabby and patched and peeling. A broken trestle to the east spoke of its past. There wasn't much to be said for its present. She drove the length of the main street and foxmd the drab little depot with its old-fashioned eaves, and the telegraph station tucked inside.

"Mr. Arthur Killeen," she printed. Art Killeen. Oh, God, why did he have to come up here? She didn't want to see him. Or him to see her in this mess. Or him to draw the document that would guarantee her wages for this time and trouble. He must hear about her engagement, of course, but not the way it was going to be if he came up here. Not seeing her like a rat in a trap, playing nurse, being a phony tower of strength, being Innes's beloved. Oh, Art, don't come, because I can't stand all this and seeing you, too.

The man reached for the blank, and she let it go out of her fingers despairingly. A train pulled in. She wished she had the nerve to drop everything and climb on board. It was headed south. Maybe it went back to Chicago. What difference where it went? But she hadn't enough money. Trapped, she thought

She paid the man less than a dollar. The word would go out over the wires and reach Art Killeen, and he would come running. Of course he would. Wasn't Innes Whitiock

his pet client? His wealthy patron? Wasn't there percentage in coming when Innes called? Now he'd know the bargain she'd made and see the short end of it. See Innes trembling and making this cowardly will and whimng about murder.

Alice walked out onto the platform. It blurred in her sight. The town train-meeters watched her with curiosity. They probably knew exactly who she was. Let them. She kicked at the boards and raised her eyes to the train.

There! There in the window, a face she knew. A long, wise, sad face. Her heart jumped. She knew it well, knew every line. For a whole year she'd sat and watched that face, and she knew its whole repertoire of expressions MacDougal Duff. A friend. A face she knew

"Mr. Duff! Professor Duff!"

But she had to talk to him! Because he would know. He did know about murder. He was an expert. He could tell Innes and set them right If only she could talk to him about It and bring him up to that house and let some sense m and clear up this stupid, maddening, suspicious, uncer-tam, upsetting situation!

"Mr. Duff ... oh, please!"

She ran along. He saw her now and smiled. How sweet his smile was! He knew her. He remembered her. But he was just going through.

Just going through.

Alice stood still. Why should MacDougal Duff break his trip for her? The train bumbled along; its rear end swayed; it crawled off, heading for the little hills.

She dug her fists into her pockets, whipped around on her heel, and made for the car. Up across the town she could see the peeling face of the Whitlock house. Damned jack-o-lantern, she thought.

A small boy, adoring eyes fixed on the big car wWle his body was paralyzed in utter admiration in a tricky pose on a baggage toick, fell off as she viciously slammed the door ot the haughty beauty. She turned the crumpled fender and went roaring up the main street.

A dog ran from her angry horn, a typical Ogaunee dog, a miserable hound. She swept with a speed and splendor up the hill.

Alien, she was. Alien in this ghastly town, this dead, this dying place. With a sick millionaire and his delusions on her hands, and no sympathy, not a scrap of it, for him in her heart.

Alice went down for lunch at one o'clock. Innes and she had spent a quiet morning. He read. She read. They were quite apart, but she was there m the room and that was all he seemed to want. The doctor had come and gone. Come directly from the front door, turning his eyes neither to the left nor the right, and gone out the same way. Alice reported a quiet night and only four of the pills taken. The doctor, viewing Innes thoughtfully, said they were to continue.

At one, she gave Innes another pill, called Fred to hover near by, and went down to her lunch.

The sisters were in the dining room. Gertrude sat at the head of the table, as befitted the oldest one. Today she wore a brown silk dress, particularly unbecoming to her colorless face. Alice watched her push food onto her fork with a dainty crust of bread. She managed very well. One would scarcely think she was blind. Except for the spots, old spots from old food, visible on the bosom of her dress. A gob of mayonnaise landed there, and helplessly Alice watched it slide. One did not say to Gertrude Whidock, "Hey, there, you spilled something."

Maud, who could perfecdy well see with those little sharp gray eyes, was even filthier. She gobbled, she slupped, she chewed with sound effects. Her teeth clicked. Her fingernails were banded in black. Alice kept her eyes averted from that quarter.

Isabel was rather dainty, though awkward with her left hand. She had to pursue bits around her plate. She had no crust of bread to capture them. She kept the right hand in the kid glove resting primly in her lap. A fine crewl thought Alice. Dear lord, how long?

The food was good, although not too plentiful. Isabel savored every morsel as if it were her last. Isabel, AUce gathered, ran the house and did the ordering. It was beneath Gertrude, for some reason. And Maud was far too lazy to be bothered.

Talk was heavy going.

"Innes tells me," said Alice, "that there used to be a

pine woods behind the house. How lovely it must have been!"

"Yes," said Gertrude, "there is a pine woods, of

course."

So that was stopped. One didn't say to Gertrude Whitlock, "Oh, no, Miss Whitlock, youVe forgotten. There's only an ugly hole in the ground.''

She tried again. "Innes tells me his father was the original owner of all this land."

"Certainly," said Gertrude.

"Papa," murmured Isabel. "Let's not speak of him, Alice, please. This is such a ... a nervous day."

Alice stared.

"My father was killed in an automobile accident," Gertrude said piously. "Isabel was with him. It was a terrible experience."

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know.''

"Well, how do you like the family?" boomed Maud, disconcertingly enough.

Alice smiled, opened her lips to speak, and smiled again.

"We're a bunch of old women," Maud said. "Ha ha. When's the doctor coming?"

"He's been," mouthed Alice.

"What? What did she say?"

Isabel ripped off the brief remark on her fingers.

"Oh, he's been, eh?" Maud looked disappointed. "Say, Isabel, Innes ought to have some wine."

"I have the keys," said Isabel

Maud twisted her lips to dislodge something from a tooth. "If I had any sense Fd go to the dentist," she an-noimced rather cheerfully.

Alice finished her meal and fled, excusing herself for nurse's duty. They were fantastic, she thought Disjointed. Scattered. She went into the kitchen to search for some ice.

The kitchen was large and old. The linoleum on the floor had tracks in it, beaten bare. Josephine was washing dishes with her big hands pmk and bright in the suds. She brought them out, dripping, and showed Alice the ice pick. No newfangled electric icebox here.

Alice was picking daintily away at a hunk of slippery

ice when she felt herself surrounded by the aura of Mr. Johnson. He had on a stiff, clean new pair of cotton work pants, but the green shirt was the same. Also the underwear. The pick fell from her nerveless fingers, and he took it, aimed one vicious powerful blow that struck like lightning and shattered the whole side of the ice cake. • He grinned. His teeth were very bad. "O.K.?" he said.

"Thank you," said Alice and filled her dish, watching out of the comer of her eye as he sauntered over and picked an apple peel off a dirty dish to nibble on. She fled, wondering for the nineteenth time who and why was Mr. Johnson.

At the top of the stairs she looked back. He was sauntering mto the sitting room. She heard Maud's voice. "Say, go on downtown and get me a box of chocolates."

"Where's the money?" said Mr. Johnson.

"You got money," Maud said. "Go on, be a sport."

Then there was silence. An ugly silence. Alice fled for the third time. Her unagination, she told herself with fervent hope, was too vivid.

Fred took the bowl of ice. "He's taking a nap.''

"Oh. Well, then . . .''

"Want to give me the keys?" Fred said.

"Of course. I'm sorry. They're in my purse." She went off to her own room and in a moment he followed. He stepped inside the room and half closed the door.

"Is Innes all right?" she said automatically.

"Sure. I can hear. Nobody came near him all morning, did they?"

"No." She handed him the keys to the car.

"Who's this KUleen?" Fred asked abruptly.

"Oh. Why, he's a lawyer."

"You blush easy," said Fred.

"rm afraid that's none of your busmess," she told him frigidly.

"I know it. Go ahead. Smack me down some more. Is he coming, though?"

"How would I know? I suppose so. He'll probably come." Her voice got bitter in spite of her.

Fred said, "Well, I was going to say . . . When will he get here, do you know?"

"Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock," Alice said

promptly and blushed again. "I mean, naturaUy, that's the first tram."

'Well look, if I were you I wouldn't... You didn't say anything about him downstairs?"

"No."

"Don't," said Fred.

"Why not?" she said carelessly.

He pushed the door a Httle tighter and came nearer. Don t want to put a time lunit on this thing," he said soflyy. "Can't you see?"

"No. What do you mean?" She wished he'd go.

"Well, look, if they think tomorrow's too late, there's still tonight."

"Oh God,''said Alice, "I can't keep thinking about that always. Things are bad enough without worrying about murder. Murder!" she repeated scornfully

Fred considered her m silence for a moment "Yeah, but look, just don't let it out."

"All right I won't," she said. "Is that what you want? Then..." she wanted to say, "Let me alone." 

"You know," Fred drawled, "if anything does happen to him, you'll be a million dollars out"

Alice felt shocked, "Why, yes," she said carefully, "though I hadn't quite thought of it that way."

"I though you did think of it that way. I mean, I'm sorry, maybe I got you wrong after all. But I thought you wanted to marry hun because of the money "

Alice stared at him. It all seemed long ago, somehow. 

"I'm sorry, Fred said. "I mean if I'm wrong. I mean if you..."

"I told you," said Alice boldly, "and it's true." 

"That's what I thought."

"Look, Fred," Alice said desperately, "you've been a big help. Keep on being a big help, will you'?"

"I'm on your side," Fred said. "I thought you knew that.

"Then why does it matter what I'm marrying him for? The thing is, now, to get out of this mess." "We can't get out until he's well enough to go." "I know."

"And all I meant was to warn you. A million dollars isan awful big stake. You've got to keep it in mind."

"I've got it in mind," Alice said.

"Relax," Fred said. "Gosh dam it. What do you want to get mad at me for?"

"I'm not."

"Well, good," he said.

She tried to smile. "Tell me again, what's this about not talking? Maybe I wasn't listening."

"All I say is, watch out they don't know the money's getting willed to you tomorrow. Because if they do know, and if they really are up to something, that would make tonight a bad night for the boss. Now do you see?"

"Yes, I see," said Alice.

Fred leaned back on the door. It swung closer to closing. He seized the knob and pushed it, using his strength. It wouldn't close.

"Oh, my God!" screamed Alice.

She saw the fingers in the crack. In the crack where the hinges were. Fingers being squeezed. She knew it must be excruciating pain.

Fred looked at her, startled. He didn't release the door, kept leaning his weight on it But there was no sound. Weirdly, impossibly, there was no sound. The fingers were caught in the door, and it must hurt. It must hurt terribly, but no one cried out. There was no scream of pain.

Alice wrenched the knob from Fred's hand and pulled the door open. Isabel stood there.

"Oh, Miss Whitlock, Tm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Isabel freed her right hand from the crack. She used her left to do it. She lifted the stiff, unnatural gray kid fingers out of the crack and hung them at her side.

"It really doesn't matter," she said, with a brilliant smile. "I was just going by." She nodded and moved off.

Alice felt hysterical. "It couldn't hurt her," she said, "but I thought it was a real hand. I thought it was real."

"It's artificial, all right," Fred said thoughtfully. "I guess that proves it. So she's only got one arm."

Alice looked up in alarm.

"I was thinking, last night," he muttered, "how do we know?"

"How do we know what?"

"If they're really blind, or deaf, or crippled."

Alice said, "Do you feel all right?" sarcastically.

"I don't feel so good," Fred said, "and that's a fact. I wonder what she heard."

"You think she was listening?"

"Certainly I think she was listening. Am I a dope? Are you?"

"I guess she must have been listening," Alice said humbly. "Now what?"

"It means a hard night tonight and no rest for the weary," Fred said. "Thaf s what it means. Like I said."

10

They had an argument about mentioniag the incident to Innes. Fred said they ought not. Said it would scare the pants off him, and he was scared enough already. But Alice insisted that if a man was in special danger he had a right to know it. She said if Fred was really worried, then Innes must be told. Otherwise, she pointed out, it was taking too much responsibility.

"You don't like responsibility, do you?" grumbled Fred, giving up. "All right, we tell him."

"But not until tonight," Alice compromised.

Through the long weary afternoon, Alice drowsed in a chair beside the big bed where Innes lay. Fred came in and spelled her about three o'clock, and she slept on her bed for an hour. Nothing happened. The whole world seemed to be waiting for Innes to heal or for night to fall. The house was quiet. The sisters were invisible. It was too quiet. They were too retiring. One felt one hadn't an eye on them.

Susan came while Alice napped. She didn't stay long.

Innes begged for company at dinnertime, and Alice thankfully ate from a tray in his room.

At about eight o'clock Gertrude rapped on the door. She came in with her somehow stately walk, steering herself a straight course across the room, avoiding furniture in her imcanny way.

"How are you feeling, Innes?"

"A little better." Innes forced a confident note into his voice, though he shrank in bed.

''Are they taking care of you?"

"Yes, oh, yes. They wash my face and they feed me pills." Innes was being brave and funny, but his fear blared like a trumpet to Alice's ears.

''rm sorry," said Gertrude daintily, "that there is so little I can do for you. But if there is anything, please let me know."

"Of course. Of course, Gertrude."

"Then good night." She found the door herself. She made Alice think of a sailboat. Her progress went in geometrical designs, like tacking—as if she knew by memory how many paces to a fixed point and the angle there on which she must turn.

Innes swallowed, as if he gulped down the heart that had been in his throat, and he looked at Alice, but they said nothing.

Soon after Isabel came sidling in. Alice watched her eye. She seemed to be able to look at one straight with one eye while the other remained sly and shifty. Still, she wasn't cross-eyed. It was baffling and strange. It made Isabel elusive, not to be pinned down.

She said anxiously, "Innes, my dear, are you comfortable?"

"I guess so," said limes.

"Have you much pain?"

Alice Imew her anxiety was a habit. Isabel was always anxious about something. Just the same, she did seem more sympathetic than her sister Gertrude, whose precise good manners only made her more withdrawn and cold.

"The pain's not so bad," Innes admitted.

"I suppose the doctor gives him something?"

"Yes," said Alice.

"That's good," said Isabel. "I'm so glad you have no unnecessary pain."

"I'll be all right," said Innes. "And I know it's a nuisance for you, Isabel . . ."

With her usual whine, Isabel said, "After all, Innes, you are one of us." She put her claw on his brow. "AUce, dear, what a fine nurse you are. We are all so glad you're here." One eye smiled frankly, but the other had a secret.

"Thank you. Miss Isabel," said Alice. "Good night."

"Good night. Good night."

It was Maud's turn.

"Well, Innes!" Her bedside maimer was a kind of raucous hilarity. "You got everything, eh? Even the pretty nurse." Innes started to say something, but Maud went right along. "Nothing to do but take it easy. How's the bed? Soft, eh? Papa liked good springs. Best spring in the house." She nudged the mattress with her knuckles.

"Don't, please."

"What's the doctor doing for you, eh? What's he say?"

Innes waggled his eyebrows.

Alice said, "Just rest"

"Eh?"

Innes tapped Maud's arm and acted it out. He folded his hands and closed his eyes.

"Sleep, eh? Does he give you dope?"

Innes shrugged. Alice smiled, uncertainly.

"Donald Follett is getting old," Maud said. "That's a good spring, that is." She punched the bed again, and Innes groaned.

"Well, sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite." Maud grinned and trundled off.

Innes sighed.

About ten o'clock Fred came in to do his turn as combination valet and male nurse. He'd taken upon himself the job of getting Innes ready for the night. Alice escaped. But when she was called back and Innes lay washed and smoothed out, she took her cue from Fred's eyebrow and began carefully.

"Innes, about tomorrow and Mr. Killeen coming . . ."

"Yes?"

"Well, they know, I'm afraid."

"Know? What do you mean? Who knows?"

"Your sisters. They know he's coming and . . . and why, Innes. So Fred and I think we'll just keep an eye on everything all night tonight. Just so you won't have to worry."

Innes said angrily, "Who told them?"

"Isabel heard me talking to Fred. It was an accident"

"Accident, hell," said Fred.

"So we thought we'd watch," said Alice quickly, while Innes looked wildly from one to the other. "And I thought you ought to know." Detached, she could see his panic growing. "Would you like one of us to stay in here with you?"

Innes said nothing.

"I thought I'd just hang around outside the door, sir,'' Fred said. "I can sit on the backstairs and keep quiet."

At that Innes seemed to melt with relief. "You're being awfully good to me, both of you," he said weakly. "But you must get some sleep, Alice."

"It doesn't matter," she murmured.

"Would you leave us a moment, Fred, please? But come back."

Fred went out without a word.

Innes said loving things. He said he appreciated her devotion. He thought she was wonderful. She was beautiful and good. He was a lucky man. He adored her. Did she know that? He hadn't said a great deal, all day, but he knew. He knew she was there. Her loyalty made him love her even more. He knew now, said Innes, that she must care for him. And it made him very happy.

Alice listened miserably.

It made him very happy because once, long ago, he had thought he was in love and beloved in return. He had had a rude awakening.

"Oh, Innes, don't," she said. "Please go to sleep now."

What a charming tyrant she was, said Innes archly. He would be good if she'd kiss him nicely.

"Shall I call Fred now?" she begged.

When Fred came in, Innes changed. He was a frightened man. "I hate to let you sit up all night," he fretted. "It's a great deal to expect." Still, it was perfectly plain that he did expect it, because he went on to say that such devotion warranted a reward and Fred would find him unable to forget this,

Alice watched Fred squirm with malicious pleasure.

"Alice, my dear, do you think you could find another blanket? The doctor said . . . And I am chilly." Nerves, she thought. "In the closet, I think. On the shelf." His voice directed her shrilly.

Alice went in the closet. "I can't reach."

Fred came.The closet was fairly smaU for two people to stand in. Fred stretched his arms up for the blanket. He

could barely reach and as he yanked it tumbled down, landing on her head.

"Oh, say. I'm sorry."

Alice let out a muffled giggle. The blanket slipped back of her. Fred reached to grab it, and all of a sudden they both realized that his arms were an oval and she stood inside. Her mussed-up hair brushed his chin. For a moment she couldn't breathe. Neither was he breathing. Then Fred dropped his hold on the blanket, and Alice felt it fall around her heels. He backed into the hangers. She stepped out into the room as Innes said, "Can't you find it?" querulously.

"We found it," said Alice, out of breath. "It fell on me. She smoothed her hair at the mirror, seeing Fred's reflection come forth with the blanket and stolidly proceed to drape it over the bed. He said, "Is that all, sir?" quietly like a servant. 

Innes said that was all, thank you, and good night Fred. 

When Fred had gone, Alice looked at her watch. "It's just after eleven," she announced, "so I think . . ."

"Yes, do go to bed, dear. And sleep well."

"Your pill?"

"Perhaps I'd better."

"If you want me, you yell," said Alice with sudden vehemence For the first time, she felt sorry for hun. She seemed to know how he must feel, hurt and helpless and atraid. It wasn't necessary to admire him. One could feel sorry.

"I'll yell," promised Innes. Then faintly, "Good night, my darling."

Fred was sitting on the top step, smoking a cigarette. He didn't look up. "Good night," he said.

Alice looked down on his thick black hair. It had a wave. "I'm not going to sleep. It isn't fair. Let me take a watch or something, hm?"

"I'm the bodyguard," he said. 

"Don t you want a pillow?"

"Say, you don't want to be too comfortable at a time like this."

"Well . . . " She hesitated.

"Go on, scram," said Fred under his breath, irritably.

Alice went off to her room, feeling pleased. Feeling quite pleased, she realized. And that was queer. Certainly, looking forward to a night spent in a house full of queer women bent on murder was no time to feel pleased. Nevertheless, stubbornly, she contmued to feel light of heart.

She put on a negligee and tripped to the bathroom and back. Fred was sitting with his back stiff against the wall. He twisted his lips at her in a perfunctory smile, and she made a comradely little gesture with her toothbrush. Back in her room she did not quite close the door.

She opened the window a htde crack. The room was small, and the dry heat pouring out of her register made her skin feel stiff and as if it might crack. The darkness held the threat of a storm. She thought she heard a mutter of thunder. Too early for thunder. Rain, though was beginning to beat down. She only half lay down on her hard bed. She truly meant to keep awake.

She woke with a start about twelve o'clock. She seemed to have been struggling with the mists of sleep for some time, as if whatever woke her had happened and been forgotten before she was awake enough to know what it was. She listened. She became aware of the storm in full blast. Rain slapped her window and spattered in. The wind shook her curtains, and they hissed along the floor. The old house complained as the wind and the rain drove against it. Surely, all she heard was the storm. But her heart beat fast, and she drew up the bed clothing carefully in order not to lose her listening check on the noisy night.

Then in a windless interval she heard a sound. A small sound. Quite near. A rusty clearing of a throat, was it? Or a cough? Or a chuckle? An odd Uttle chuckle, almost a croon. The same queer little sound she'd heard once before. Whatever it was, it was surely the very same.

Alice strained her eyes toward her door. It was still slighdy ajar. Just as she'd left it. Or was it? Did it swing? She listened, and her blood sang in her veins with fear.

Wind raged outside. Honest wind. How much more sinister that strange little soimd was, and what was it doing in the night?

What was it about to do?

Nothing happened. There was no more, except the dying drive of the rain. Whatever had passed her door was past. She felt released, so she knew it had gone. It had passed by.

A long, long time later, when the storm was over and the house wept rain water from its eaves and gutters, Alice put her feet cautiously to the floor and crept to look out ino the hall. It was quiet. The tiny night light near the head of the stairs burned lonesomely. She couldn't see Fred nor the place where he should still be. Walls along the stairs cut off her view. She could see as far as the corner of the old mahogany chest and the picture that hung over it.

She could see, the other way, Maud's door, tight closed, impenetrable. She could see a Uttle way, through the railing, down the stairs, which descended into deep darkness. No one was there. Nobody. Nothing.

She crept back to bed, and her heart subsided. Slowly she coaxed it back to normal. Her feet grew hot from its heavy work. Then slowly grew cold.

She lay, scarcely thinkuig, eyes fastened on the door, lest it move. She lay for hours. Perhaps she dozed. But not long and not often. The necessity for watching the door would force her lids up. So she lay and watched in the dark.

The house was chilly. It grew colder and colder. She shivered and pulled the covers closer. But it was cold.

Really cold.

She shivered and huddled there a long time before she thought to stir and feel of the register m her wall. It was cold. Strange. Last night hadn't been so cold. Was it going to snow? A freak snow? Or freeze?

What a miserable night. Miserable. Miserable.

She thought of Fred. He'd be stiff. He'd be frozen. She began to worry about it. The thought kept nagging at her, how cold he must be, sitting on the cold floor in that drafty hall. Suddenly she sat up and pulled her pillows together. She bundled them and all the bedclothes in her arms. She was going out there to sit with Fred. It would be better than this. Not any warmer, maybe, but better. They could whisper. Anyhow, she couldn't sleep.

She went slowly along her side of the hall and turned

the comer near the top of the stairs. Fred was still there. She could see him, motionless, his head still against the wall. Was he asleep? He sat so still. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. If so, it was a good thing she'd come.

He didn't move as she drew closer, but he shivered, "Hello." His eyes were open, after all. He had just been sitting still.

She dumped the bedding half upon him. "Aren't you cold?"

"Yeah," he said.

"I can't sleep. No use." She handed him a pillow and put the other on the floor to sit on, herself. "Anything?"

"Nope," he said. "You hear the storm?"

"It woke me."

"Too bad."

She forgot to mention the funny little sound. His hand touched hers, and they arranged the blankets.

"Why, you're icy," she said. "What makes this house so cold?"

"Betcha somebody let the furnace go out," he said sleepily. "Feels like it."

Alice's nostrils dilated.

"Fred"—she leaned closer and stared into his face—"you're dopey. What... ? Fred, don't you smell ... I"

"Smell what?"

"Coal gas," she said. She jumped to her feet. In a moment, painfully, Fred unbent himself and stood up, too.

"Was I asleep?" he demanded.

"I don't know. Can't you smell it now?"

"Yeah, I smell it."

"Oh, my God," said Alice out loud. She flew to Innes' door.

The room was full of coal gas. The moment they opened the door it hit them and choked them. Fred blundered across the room to the windows. Alice flew to the bed. Innes was lying with his mouth open. He looked ghastly. She heard Fred kicking at the metal of the register in the floor.

"Pouring up from the furnace," he shouted. "Fan him." Alice grabbed a pillow and fanned. Fred had every window open, on three sides of the room. Night air began to reach her, and she dared breathe.

Innes lay with his mouth open. She didn't dare touch him.

Fred said in her ear, "I'm going down cellar. Keep fanning."

"Call the doctor," she choked. "Right away."

"O.K."

She heard doors open. Isabel appeared in a long-sleeved flannel gown, with the kid glove still on that inanimate hand.

"What's the matter?"

"Coal gas."

Gertrude's voice called distantly.

Alice thought frantically: His ribs are broken. You can't do artificial respiration. What can you do?

Somebody took the pillow out of her weakening hands and began to beat with it. It was Mr. Johnson, an apparition in his trousers and winter underwear.

Then Maud. "What's that smell?" she roared. "What's that smell?"

The rest of it was a nightmare, until the doctor came.

Alice leaned, shaking, against the window jamb and watched them mill aroimd. Maud, in blue satin with lace, was a terrible sight. Gertrude came in, neat and thin in a tan wool bathrobe. The Whitlock sisters braided their hair at night. Their old faces looked raddled and horrible under file girlish pigtails. Mr. Johnson's tremendous chest was as brown as his face. Josephine in pink, came timidly along. Her bosom sagged.

And Innes lay with his mouth open.

But he wasn't dead. Dr. Follett, fully clothed, came briskly in and told them so. He dispersed them. He sent Josephine to make coffee and make it strong. He sent Alice for a warmer garment for herself. He sent Mr. Johnson to the cellar to fix the furnace and get heat up, if possible. He sent the sisters nowhere, but they went. Maud stood before him in her blue and lace, as if daring him to look, but he didn't look. He went about his business, and she went away.

But Innes was alive.

It was four in the morning by the time the confusion was over, the room quiet, and Lmes able to smile at them weakly.

"If I were you," the doctor said to Alice, "I'd get to bed. And you too, young man." Fred frowned. "You needn't worry. I'll stay right here until eight o'clock. I want to watch him."

Alice staggered off and fell on her bed. It was stripped and bare, but she didn't care. She had her coat on anyhow, and the doctor was here until eight o'clock. The responsibility was his until then. A load gone. Time to sigh and forget it. It didn't occur to her to wonder where, in the course of events, she had got that load, or why it belonged to her. It was enough to feel it gone. She could sleep. Someone came and put some blankets over her. She murmured gratefully.

Fred closed her door as softly as he could. He stood in the hall just outside, rubbing the back of his neck. Then he went along to his cot in the lumber room.

11

Susan Innes turned away from her telephone. "That was the doctor," she said.

Her paying guest looked up from his breakfast of ham and eggs.

"There's been more trouble up there." Her soft mouth was trying to be grim. "Do you know, I begin to think something must be wrong."

"How is Miss Brennan?" asked MacDougal Duff.

"Oh, dear, I didn't ask. But then, he didn't say, either. It seems that something went wrong with the furnace last night and filled Innes's room with coal gas, and he was nearly overcome. But Fred—that's the chaufeur, a real nice boy, too—Fred and Alice or both of them found out about it in time. So Innes is all right now. And Alice must be all right, too, or the doctor would have said."

Duff said, "I'll go up there with you, please."

"Oh, yes," she said. "Of course, you must Besides, I told Isabel last night that I would bring you."

"Isabel is the crippled sister?"

"Yes, the youngest one. Oh, I ought to have insisted. But she said Alice was in bed and asleep and it was late. I hated to ask them to wake her.''

"What time was it then?" Duff asked.

"Well, they didn't send your wke up from the station for hours. They're so careless that way. As soon as it came, I called. It must have been eleven o'clock!" Susan's awed tone indicated that eleven o'clock to her was very late indeed. "I spoke to Isabel. She said AUce was quite aU nght and sound asleep in bed. So, of couree, I. . "

"Don't worry about it," Duff said, smiling at her. "You did your duty."

"Did I?" said Susan. "I thmk I ought to have waited up to you, or left a note. The wire said, Tlease find Alice Brennan and ask if she needs help.' Well, of course, I had more or less found her, smce I knew who she was, but..."

"Why didn't they telephone the message to you? Do they insist upon delivering telegrams here?"

"It's so stupid," Susan said. "They forgot I have a phone. I haven't had it for very long, you see, and people are so used to having to reach me by other means "

From what you tell me," Duff said, "it's your son who seems to have had all the trouble."