n cord ending in a cheap, clear-glass bulb, but
its light was sufficient to penetrate even the farthest low nooks made
by the three gables. He blew out his candle and dropped it, as useless
now.

A quick tour convinced him that nothing human was concealed behind one
of Nita Selim's empty wardrobe trunks, or behind one of the several
pieces of heavy old furniture, undoubtedly left behind by the
dispossessed Crain family.

Big footprints on the thick dust which coated the floor showed him that
he was being no more thorough than Captain Strawn's brace of
plainclothes detectives had been much earlier that evening. Two pairs of
giant footprints....

With an exclamation he discovered a smaller, narrow pair of prints, and
followed their winding trail all around and across the attic. And then
he remembered.... Ralph Hammond's footprints, of course, made that
morning as he went about his legitimate business of measuring and
estimating for the job of turning the storeroom into bedrooms and
bathrooms.

Dundee had not realized that he was frightened until he was in the hall
again, facing one of the three doors in the plastered wall. With
surprise, and some amusement, he became aware that his hands were
trembling, and that his knees had a curious tendency to buckle.

The fact that the door directly in front of him was open about two
inches served, for some odd reason, to steady his nerves. Pushing the
door wide open with his foot--for he never forgot the possibility of
incriminating fingerprints which might easily be obliterated, he
discovered a light switch near the door frame.

The instant illumination from a ceiling cluster revealed a large
bedroom, and less clearly, another and smaller room beyond it, facing as
the house faced--toward the south. Knees and hands steady again, he
investigated the finished portion of the gabled story swiftly. A
charming layout, he told himself. Had Penny Crain once enjoyed this
delightful little sitting-room, with its tiny balcony built out upon the
sloping roof?... And it gave him pleasure to think that this big,
well-furnished but not fussily feminine bedroom had once been hers, as
well as the small but perfect bathroom whose high narrow window
overlooked the back garden. The closets, dresser drawers and highboy
drawers were completely empty, however, of any traces of her occupancy
or that of any other....

With these rooms going to waste, why--he suddenly asked himself--had
Nita Selim