ill covered, knobby protuberances indicating the pictures and books
beneath. On one corner of the table, where the cover had been pushed
aside, was a cup, empty and clean-washed, and as if to prove her
contention, Margery picked up from the floor a newspaper, dated Friday
morning, the twenty-second.

A used towel in the bath-room near-by completed the inventory; Margery
had been right; some one had used the room while the house was closed.

"Might it not have been your--father?" Edith asked, when we stood again
at the foot of the stairs. "He could have come here to look for
something, and lain down to rest."

"I don't think so," Margery said wanly. "I left the door so he could get
in with his key, but--he always used his study couch. I don't think he
ever spent five minutes in my sitting-room in his life."

We had to let it go at that finally. I put them in a cab, and saw them
start away: then I went back into the house. I had arranged to sleep
there and generally to look after things--as I said before. Whatever
scruples I had had about taking charge of Margery Fleming and her
affairs, had faded with Wardrop's defection and the new mystery of the
blue boudoir.

The lower floor of the house was full of people that night, local and
state politicians, newspaper men and the usual crowd of the morbidly
curious. The undertaker took everything in hand, and late that evening I
could hear them carrying in tropical plants and stands for the flowers
that were already arriving. Whatever panoply the death scene had lacked,
Allan Fleming was lying in state now.

At midnight things grew quiet. I sat in the library, reading, until
then, when an undertaker's assistant in a pink shirt and polka-dot
cravat came to tell me that everything was done.

"Is it customary for somebody to stay up, on occasions like this?" I
asked. "Isn't there an impression that wandering cats may get into the
room, or something of that sort?"

"I don't think it will be necessary, sir," he said, trying to conceal a
smile. "It's all a matter of taste. Some people like to take their
troubles hard. Since they don't put money on their eyes any more, nobody
wants to rob the dead."

He left with that cheerful remark, and I closed and locked the house
after him. I found Bella in the basement kitchen with all the lights
burning full, and I stood at the foot of the stairs while she scooted to
bed like a scared rabbit. She was a strange creature, Bella--not so
s