ve looked for so carefully. Put on your thinking cap,
old dear, and try to answer accurately any question that Mr. Snow may
wish to ask you."

Katy looked expectantly at Eugene Snow.

"In the meantime," said Linda, "I'll be excused and go bring round the
Bear Cat."

"I have only one question to ask you," said Mr. Snow. "Can you recall
whether, for any reason, there was a screen out of the guest-room window
directly in front of which the reading table was standing the night Miss
Marian occupied the room before leaving for San Francisco?"

"Sure there was," answered Katy instantly in her richest, mellowest
brogue.

She was taking the inventory she had been told to take. She was
deciding, as instantly as Linda had done, that she liked this man.
Years, appearance, everything about him appealed to Katy as being
exactly right for Marian; and her cunning Irish mind was leaping and
flying and tugging at the leash that thirty years of conventions had
bound upon her.

"Sure," she repeated, "the wildest santana that ever roared over us just
caught that screen and landed it slam against the side of the garage,
and it set inside for three days till I could get a workman to go up
the outside and put it back. It had been out two days before the night
Marian was here."

"Did Miss Linda know about it?" asked Snow.

"Not that I know of," said Katy. "She is a schoolgirl, you know, off
early in the morning, back and up to her room, the busiest youngster the
valley knows; and coin' a dale of good she is, too. It was Miss Eileen
that heard the screen ripped out and told me it was gone. She's the one
who looked after the housekapin' and paid the bills. She knew all about
it. If 'twould be helpin' Miss Marian any about findin' them plans we've
ransacked the premises for, I couldn't see any reason why Miss Eileen
wouldn't tell ye the same as I'm tellin' ye, and her housekapin'
accounts and her cheque book would show she paid the carpenter, if it's
legal business you're wantin'."

"Thank you, Katy," said Mr. Snow. "I hope nothing of that kind will
occur. A great wrong has been perpetrated, but we must find some way
to right it without involving such extremely nice young women in the
annoyance of legal proceedings."

Katy folded her arms and raised her head. All her share of the blarney
of Ireland began to roll from the mellow tip of her tongue.

"Now, the nice man ye are, to be seein' the beauty of them girls so
quick," she said.