t evening?"

A slow flush crept into her thin cheeks. The unreadable eyes that were
traveling over Jerry Boyne stopped suddenly and held him with a quiet
stare.

"I understood it was my daughter's movements on that evening you wished
to trace, Mr. Boyne," she said slowly. "It would be difficult to trace
mine. Really, I had so much on my hands with the reception and
inefficient help--" She broke off, her eyes never leaving my own, even
as she added smoothly, "It would be very, very difficult."

There is an effect in class almost like the distinction of race. These
women spoke a baffling language; their psychology was hard for me. If
there was something hid up amongst them that ought to be uncovered by
diplomacy and delicate indirection, it would take a smarter man than the
one who stood in my number tens to do it.

"Mrs. Thornhill," I said, "you did leave the house. You went to Mr.
Gilbert's study. The shot that killed him left you a nervous wreck, so
that you can't hear a tire blow-out without reenacting in your mind the
scene of that murder. You'll talk now."

"You think I will? Talk to you?" very low and quiet, eyes once more
closed.

"Why not? It's got to come; here in your own home, with me--or I'll have
to put you where you'll be forced to answer questions."

"Oh, you threaten me, do you?" Her eyes flashed open, and looked at me,
hard as flint. "Very well. I'll answer no questions as to what happened
on the evening of Thomas Gilbert's death, except in the presence of
Worth Gilbert, his son."

My retirement down the Thornhill stairs, made with such dignity as I
could muster, was in fact, a panic flight. Halfway, Cora Thornhill all
but finished me by looking out from the living room, and calling in Ina
Vandeman's voice,

"Erne, show Mr. Boyne out, won't you?"

Ernestine completed the job when she answered--in Ina Vandeman's voice,
also--

"Yes, dear; I will." It was only the scraps of me that she swept out
through the front door.

I stood on the porch and mopped my brow. Across, there at the Gilbert
place was Worth himself, charging around the grounds with Vandeman and a
lot of other decorators, pruning shears in hand, going for a thicket of
bamboos that shut off the vegetable garden. At one side Barbara stood
alone, looking, it seemed to me, rather depressed. I made for her. She
met me with,

"I know what you've been doing. Skeet came to me about it while Ina was
phoning home from the country club.