t of filthy river in the bedrooms?"

I was never a match for him, and I make it a principle never to bandy
words with my boarders. I took the pillow and the slipper and went
out. The telephone was ringing on the stair landing. It was the
theater, asking for Miss Brice.

"She has gone away," I said.

"What do you mean? Moved away?"

"Gone for a few days' vacation," I replied. "She isn't playing this
week, is she?"

"Wait a moment," said the voice. There was a hum of conversation from
the other end, and then another man came to the telephone.

"Can you find out where Miss Brice has gone?"

"I'll see."

I went to Ladley's door and knocked. Mr. Ladley answered from just
beyond.

"The theater is asking where Mrs. Ladley is."

"Tell them I don't know," he snarled, and shut the door. I took his
message to the telephone.

Whoever it was swore and hung up the receiver.

All the morning I was uneasy--I hardly knew why. Peter felt it as I
did. There was no sound from the Ladleys' room, and the house was
quiet, except for the lapping water on the stairs and the police
patrol going back and forth.

At eleven o'clock a boy in the neighborhood, paddling on a raft, fell
into the water and was drowned. I watched the police boat go past,
carrying his little cold body, and after that I was good for nothing.
I went and sat with Peter on the stairs. The dog's conduct had been
strange all morning. He had sat just above the water, looking at it
and whimpering. Perhaps he was expecting another kitten or--

It is hard to say how ideas first enter one's mind. But the notion
that Mr. Ladley had killed his wife and thrown her body into the water
came to me as I sat there. All at once I seemed to see it all:
the quarreling the day before, the night trip in the boat, the
water-soaked slipper, his haggard face that morning--even the way the
spaniel sat and stared at the flood.

Terry brought the boat back at half past eleven, towing it behind
another.

"Well," I said, from the stairs, "I hope you've had a pleasant
morning."

"What doing?" he asked, not looking at me.

"Rowing about the streets. You've had that boat for hours."

He tied it up without a word to me, but he spoke to the dog. "Good
morning, Peter," he said. "It's nice weather--for fishes, ain't it?"

He picked out a bit of floating wood from the water, and showing it to
the dog, flung it into the parlor. Peter went after it with a splash.
He was pretty fat, and