finding a servant I could send upstairs to Clive to find how he is.”

“Clive was out here five minutes ago,” she replied. “He went back to the interrogation. I’ll—”

“Interrogation?” repeated Osmun, puzzled. “Is it a game? Or—?”

Briefly she outlined to the dumbfounded man[114] the story of the evening’s events. He listened, open-mouthed, his face, in the moonlight, blank with crass incredulity. The instant she paused he began to hurl questions at her. Impatiently she answered them. But in their mid-flow she turned away and walked to the long window.

[114]

“I’m afraid I must go in,” she said, stiffly, his avid curiosity and his evident relish of the affair jarring her unaccountably. “They may want to interrogate me, too. The chief was going to examine us all, I believe. You’ll excuse me?”

“I’ll do better than that,” he assured her. “I’ll come along. I wouldn’t miss this thing for a million.”

Before she could deter him he had stepped past her and had flung wide the French window. Standing aside, he motioned her to pass through. She hesitated. Chief Quimby, catching sight of her on the threshold, beckoned her in.

“We wondered where you were, Miss Lane,” said he. “We’ve been waiting for you. Every one else has been questioned. Come in, please.”

Reluctantly she entered. Osmun Creede pressed in, at her heels, closing the window behind him. The guests were seated in various parts of the living room, one and all looking thoroughly uncomfortable. At a table sat the[115] chief. Beside him, holding an open note book, sat the constable.

[115]

Through the doorway Doris could see in the hall a flustered group of servants, babbling in excited whispers. One woman among them was repeating snifflingly at intervals that she was a respectable working girl and that never before in her life had any one asked her such a passel of turrible questions and she was going to pack up and leave right away and she’d have the law on them that had asked was she a thief!

Quimby seemed to note the presence of this offstage chorus at the same time as did Doris. For he turned to the housekeeper who stood primly in a far corner:

“You can send them back to the kitchen quarters, Mrs. Horoson,” he said. “I’m through with 

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