ring my last question.

"Is the family coming home?" the policeman asked.

"I don't know; I think so," was her weak reply.

"Have you the keys?" I now demanded, seeing her fumbling in her pocket.

She did not answer; a sly look displaced the anxious one she had
hitherto displayed, and she turned away.

"I don't see what business it is of the neighbors," she muttered,
throwing me a dissatisfied scowl over her shoulder.

"If you've got the keys, we will go in and see that things are all
right," said the policeman, stopping her with a light touch.

She trembled; I saw that she trembled, and naturally became excited.
Something was wrong in the Van Burnam mansion, and I was going to be
present at its discovery. But her next words cut my hopes short.

"I have no objection to _your_ going in," she said to the policeman,
"but I will not give up my keys to _her_. What right has she in our
house any way." And I thought I heard her murmur something about a
meddlesome old maid.

The look which I received from the policeman convinced me that my ears
had not played me false.

"The lady's right," he declared; and pushing by me quite
disrespectfully, he led the way to the basement door, into which he and
the so-called cleaner presently disappeared.

I waited in front. I felt it to be my duty to do so. The various
passers-by stopped an instant to stare at me before proceeding on their
way, but I did not flinch from my post. Not till I had heard that the
young woman whom I had seen enter these doors at midnight was well, and
that her delay in opening the windows was entirely due to fashionable
laziness, would I feel justified in returning to my own home and its
affairs. But it took patience and some courage to remain there. Several
minutes elapsed before I perceived the shutters in the third story open,
and a still longer time before a window on the second floor flew up and
the policeman looked out, only to meet my inquiring gaze and rapidly
disappear again.

Meantime three or four persons had stopped on the walk near me, the
nucleus of a crowd which would not be long in collecting, and I was
beginning to feel I was paying dearly for my virtuous resolution, when
the front door burst violently open and we caught sight of the trembling
form and shocked face of the scrub-woman.

"She's dead!" she cried, "she's dead! Murder!" and would have said more
had not the policeman pulled her back, with a growl which sounded very
much