business, too, but he had nothing to
do. It was the wife who paid the bills, and a lot of quarreling they
did about it.

I knocked at the door at ten o'clock, and Mr. Ladley opened it. He
was a short man, rather stout and getting bald, and he always had a
cigarette. Even yet, the parlor carpet smells of them.

"What do you want?" he asked sharply, holding the door open about an
inch.

"The water's coming up very fast, Mr. Ladley," I said. "It's up to the
swinging-shelf in the cellar now. I'd like to take up the carpet and
move the piano."

"Come back in an hour or so," he snapped, and tried to close the door.
But I had got my toe in the crack.

"I'll have to have the piano moved, Mr. Ladley," I said. "You'd better
put off what you are doing."

I thought he was probably writing. He spent most of the day writing,
using the wash-stand as a desk, and it kept me busy with oxalic acid
taking ink-spots out of the splasher and the towels. He was writing a
play, and talked a lot about the Shuberts having promised to star him
in it when it was finished.

"Hell!" he said, and turning, spoke to somebody in the room.

"We can go into the back room," I heard him say, and he closed the
door. When he opened it again, the room was empty. I called in Terry,
the Irishman who does odd jobs for me now and then, and we both got to
work at the tacks in the carpet, Terry working by the window, and I by
the door into the back parlor, which the Ladleys used as a bedroom.

That was how I happened to hear what I afterward told the police.

Some one--a man, but not Mr. Ladley--was talking. Mrs. Ladley broke
in: "I won't do it!" she said flatly. "Why should I help him? He
doesn't help me. He loafs here all day, smoking and sleeping, and sits
up all night, drinking and keeping me awake."

The voice went on again, as if in reply to this, and I heard a rattle
of glasses, as if they were pouring drinks. They always had whisky,
even when they were behind with their board.

"That's all very well," Mrs. Ladley said. I could always hear her, she
having a theatrical sort of voice--one that carries. "But what about
the prying she-devil that runs the house?"

"Hush, for God's sake!" broke in Mr. Ladley, and after that they spoke
in whispers. Even with my ear against the panel, I could not catch a
word.

The men came just then to move the piano, and by the time we had taken
it and the furniture up-stairs, the water was over the kitchen floor,