"

"Why, Lydia?" Dundee asked gently.

"Because she was the only friend I had in the world, and I couldn't have
loved her better if she'd been my own child," Lydia answered. And the
stern voice had broken at last. "I was still there in the back hall when
a cop come and asked me a lot of questions, and then that man--" she
pointed to Captain Strawn, "--said I could go and lay down. He helped me
down the basement stairs."

Dundee tapped his teeth with the long pencil he had kept so busy that
evening--tapped them long and thoughtfully. Then:

"Lydia, did you see anyone--_anyone at all!_--from your basement room
window before you answered Mrs. Dunlap's ring?"

CHAPTER NINE

For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure that
Lydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered,
the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial:

"I didn't see nobody."

"I presume your basement room has a window looking out upon the back
garden?" Dundee persisted.

"Yes, it has, but I didn't waste no time looking out of it," Lydia
answered grimly. "I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw."

She _had_ seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would be
harder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than the
abscessed tooth had been.

Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, he
dismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn's custody.

"Well, Janet, I hope you're satisfied!" Penny Crain said bitingly, as
she dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. "If ever a maid was
absolutely crazy about her mistress--"

"I'm _not_ satisfied!" Janet Raymond retorted furiously. "She's just the
sort that would harbor a grudge for _years_, and then, all hopped up
with dope--"

"Stop it, Janet!" Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddly
upon her kind, pleasant face.

"Listen here, Dundee," Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. "My wife is
getting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on us
yesterday, and--"

"And _my_ little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy--just three
months old," Judge Marshall joined the protest. "I'm all for assisting
justice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know,
but--"

"I'm all right, really, Hugo," Karen Marshall faltered.

"Please be patient a little longer," Dundee urged apologetically. After
all, only one of these people could be guilty of Ni