uite sure she had stopped at the right place, Miss Smith hailed a
man pottering in a chrysanthemum bed in the yard of the adjoining
cottage.

"Mrs. Vinsolving?" he said, lifting a tousled head above his palings.
"Yessum, she lives there--leastwise she did. She moved away only the day
before yesterday. Sort of sudden, I think it must have been. I didn't
know she was going till she was gone." He grinned in extenuation of the
unaccountable failure of a small-town man to acquaint himself with all
available facts regarding a neighbor's private affairs. "But then she
never wasn't much of a hand, Mrs. Vinsolving wasn't, for mixing with
folks. I'll say she wasn't!"

Back she turned to seek out Searle, he of up-to-date real estate. In a
dingy office upstairs over the local harness store a lean and rangy
gentleman raised a brindled beard above a roll-top desk and in answer to
her first question crisply remarked, "Can't tell."

"But surely if she put her property in your hands for disposal she must
have given you some address where you might communicate with her?"
pressed Miss Smith.

"Oh, yes, she done that all right, but that ain't the question you ast
me first. You ast me if I could tell you where she was--and that I can't
do."

"I see. Then I presume she left instructions with you not to give her
present whereabouts to anyone?"

"Well, you might figger it out that way and mebbe not so far wrong,"
said the cryptic Mr. Searle. "But if you think you'd like to buy or rent
her place I'm fully empowered to act. Got the keys right here and a car
standing outside--take you right on out there in a jiffy if you say the
word."

He rose up and followed her halfway down the steps, plainly torn
between a desire to make a commission and a regret that under orders
from his client he could furnish no details regarding her late
movements.

"If you're interested in any other piece of property in this vicinity--"
were the last words she heard floating down the stair well as she passed
out upon the uneven sidewalk.

She knew exactly what she meant to do next. At sight of her badge, as
shown to him through his wicketed window marked "General Delivery," the
village postmaster gave her a number on a side street well up-town in
New York, adding: "Going away, Mrs. Vinsolving particularly asked me not
to tell anybody where her mail was to be sent on to. Kind of a secretive
woman anyhow, she was, and besides she's had some very pressing troub