make any of the other guests realise
that anything unusual is afoot. For that would mean talk on the outside,
and talk on the outside means sensational stories in the newspapers. You
can make no mistake, and yet for the life of me I cannot see how you are
going to guard against making them. Everything depends on you, and that
everything means a very great deal to our country. Yes, everything
depends on you, because I am at the end of my rope."

He finished and sat back in his chair, eyeing her face. Her expression
gave him no clew to any conclusions she might have reached.

"I'll do my best," she said simply, "but I must have full authority to
do it in my own way."

"Agreed. I'm not asking anything else from you."

In a study she rose and went to the mantelpiece and took one book from
the heap of books there. She opened it and glanced abstractedly through
the leaves as they flittered under her fingers.

With her eyes on the page headings she said to him: "I quarrel with one
of your premises."

"Which one?"

"The one that the woman we want will have the paper hidden in her hair
or in her corsage or possibly in her stocking."

"Well, I couldn't think of any other likely place in which she might
hide it. She wouldn't have it in a pocket, would she? Women don't have
pockets in their party frocks, do they?"

Disregarding his questions she asked one herself:

"You say it is a small strip of paper, and that probably it is rolled up
into a wad about the size of a hazelnut?"

"It was rolled up so when Westerfeltner parted from it--that's all I can
tell you. Why do you ask that?"

"Oh, it doesn't particularly matter. I merely was thinking of various
possibilities and contingencies."

Apparently she now had found the place in the book which, more or less
mechanically, she had been seeking. She turned down the upper corner of
a certain page for a marker and closed the book.

"Well, in any event," she said, "I must get to work. I think I shall
begin by calling up my cousin to tell her, among other things, that her
party may have some rather unique features that she had not included in
her program. And where can I reach you by telephone or by
messenger--say, in an hour from now?"

A number of small things, seemingly in no wise related to the main
issue, occurred that evening and on the following morning. In the
evening, for example, Mrs. Hadley-Smith revised the schedule of
amusements she had planned for her All F