o the street. I know that you do not read even one
newspaper regularly. I know also that yesterday and today you bought
a great many papers, apparently to get every possible detail about a
certain subject. Do you deny this?"

She did not deny it, she did not answer at all. She sank down on
a chair, her wide staring eyes looking straight ahead of her, and
trembling so that the old chair cracked underneath her weight. But this
condition did not last long. The woman had herself well under control.
Muller's coming, or something else, perhaps, may have overwhelmed her
for a moment, but she soon regained her usual self-possession.

"Still you have not told me what you want here," she began coldly,
and as he did not answer she continued: "I have a feeling that you
are watching us. I had this feeling when I saw you the first time and
noticed then--pardon my frankness--that you stared at us sharply while
we were saying goodbye to our master and mistress. Then I saw you pass
twice again through the street and look up at our windows. This morning
I find you at our garden gate and now--you will pardon me if I tell the
exact truth--now you have wormed yourself in here under false pretenses
because you have no right whatever to force an entrance into this house.
And I ask you again, what do you want here?"

Muller was embarrassed. That did not happen very often. Also it did not
happen very often that he was in the wrong as he was now. The woman
was absolutely right. He had wormed himself into the house under false
pretenses to follow up the new clue which almost unconsciously as yet
was leading him on with a stronger and stronger attraction. He could not
have explained it and he certainly was not ready to say anything about
it at police headquarters, even at the risk of being obliged to continue
to enter this mysterious house under false pretenses and to be told
that he was doing so. Of course this sort of thing was necessary in his
business, it was the only way in which he could follow up the criminals.

But there was something in this woman's words that cut into a sensitive
spot and drove the blood to his cheeks. There was something in the
bearing and manner of this one-time nurse that impressed him, although
he was not a man to be lightly impressed. He had a feeling that he had
made a fool of himself and it bothered him. For a moment he did not know
what he should say to this woman who stood before him with so much quiet
energy