but just kept right on upstairs. When I turned into the second
floor, I heard Ellen say, 'Mrs. Markham will receive you.' I didn't pay
no attention to that at the time. It was only one of twenty little
things I remembered. Stayed in the back of my head, waitin' to tie up
with something else.

"Come Tuesday--week ago to-day and my afternoon off. I was comin' home
early, about nine o'clock. I've got front door privileges, but I
generally use the servants' entrance just the same. Right ahead of me,
a green automobile with one of those limousine bodies drove up to the
front door. It's dark down in the area by the servants' entrance. I
stopped like I was huntin' through my skirt for my key, and looked. Out
of the automobile come a man. He turned around to speak to the
chauffeur and I got the light on his face. _Who_ do you suppose it was?
Robert H. Norcross!"

"The railroad king?"

Rosalie pursed her lips and nodded wisely.

"How did you know? You've never seen him before."

"Ain't it my business to know the faces of everybody? What do I read
the personals in the magazines for? You'd know Theodore Roosevelt if
you saw him first time, wouldn't you? But I made surer than that. Next
day I matched the number of his automobile with the automobile
register. That number belongs to Robert H. Norcross."

Dr. Blake whistled.

"Playing for big game!" he said.

"That was what struck me," said Rosalie, "and while it wasn't
impossible that this Mr. Norcross might have a straight interest in the
spirit world--well, when you see big medium and big money together, it
looks like big _fake_. And there was the man with the notes who read
the financial pages--he jumped back into my mind.

"The servants' entrance comes out through the kitchen onto the second
floor. When I come into the hall, Ellen was waiting for me. She was
tiptoeing and whispering.

"'Mrs. Markham,' she says, 'wanted that I should tell you she has
sitters unexpected. There's some of her devil doin's going on
downstairs to-night. She wanted me to catch you when you came in and
ask you to go very quiet to your room.'

"While I went upstairs, I listened hard. Just before I came out on the
landing of the servants' hall, I heard a bell ring, away down below.
Just a little ring--b-r-r. Now, you know if there's one thing more 'n
another that I've got, it's ears--and ears that remember, too. I hadn't
been a day in that house when I knew every bell in it and who was
ringi