little shake. "He speaks as good English as I
do. And now we're going to stop talking about him--you're worse than the
newspapers." She took off her things and going into my closet began to
rummage for the pop-corn. "Oh, how glad I am to get away," she sang
out to me. "We're supposed to have gone to Mexico; even Dorothy doesn't
know. Where's the pop-corner or the corn-popper or whatever you call
it?"

She was as happy to have escaped the reporters and the people she knew
as a child, and she sat down on the floor in front of the fire and began
to shell the corn into the popper, as if she'd done it only the day
before.

"I guess you're safe enough here," I said. "It's always slack in
January--only a few chronics and the Saturday-to-Monday husbands, except
a drummer now and then who drives up from Finleyville. It's too early
for drooping society buds, and the chronic livers don't get around until
late March, after the banquet season closes. It will be pretty quiet for
a while."

And at that minute the door was flung open, and Bath-house Mike
staggered in.

"The old doctor!" he gasped. "He's dead, Miss Minnie--died just now in
the hot room in the bathhouse! One minute he was givin' me the divil for
something or other, and the next--I thought he was asleep."

Something that had been heavy in my breast all afternoon suddenly seemed
to burst and made me feel faint all over. But I didn't lose my head.

"Does anybody know yet?" I asked quickly. He shook his head.

"Then he didn't die in the bath-house, Mike," I said firmly. "He died
in his bed, and you know it. If it gets out that he died in the hot room
I'll have the coroner on you."

Miss Patty was standing by the railing of the spring. I got my shawl and
started out after Mike, and she followed.

"If the guests ever get hold of this they'll stampede. Start any
excitement in a sanatorium," I said, "and one and all they'll dip their
thermometers in hot water and swear they've got fever!"

And we hurried to the house together.

CHAPTER III

A WILL

Well, we got the poor old doctor moved back to his room, and had one of
the chambermaids find him there, and I wired to Mrs. Van Alstyne, who
was Mr. Dicky Carter's sister, and who was on her honeymoon in South
Carolina. The Van Alstynes came back at once, in very bad tempers, and
we had the funeral from the preacher's house in Finleyville so as not to
harrow up the sanatorium people any more than necessary.