In the first place,
she had been in the Nixon cottage not more than an hour when she ordered
the telephone taken out--not merely discontinued, but taken out. She
gave no reason, and satisfied the telephone-company by making the local
manager a present of ten dollars. She kept all of the green
window-shutters open during the day, letting the sunshine into the rooms
to give the carpets the first surprise they had had in years, and at
night she sat out on the screened-in porch, with a reading-lamp, until
an hour when many of the residents of Tinkletown were looking out of
their windows to see what sort of a day it was going to be. She paid
cash for everything, and always with bright, crisp banknotes, "fresh
from the mint." She slept till noon. She went out every afternoon about
four, rain or shine, for long motor-rides in the country. The queerest
thing about her was that she never went near the "movies."

Nearly every afternoon, directly after luncheon--they called it dinner
in Tinkletown--she appeared in the back yard and put her extraordinarily
barbered dog through a raft of tricks. Passers-by always paused to watch
the performance. She had him walking first on his hind legs, then on his
front legs; then he was catching a tennis-ball which she tossed every
which way (just as a woman would, said Alf Reesling); and when he wasn't
catching the ball, he was turning somersaults, or waltzing to the tune
she whistled, or playing dead. The poodle's name was Snooks.

* * * * *

The venerable town marshal, Anderson Crow, sat in front of Lamson's
store one hot evening about a week after the advent of the mystery. He
was the center of a thoughtful, speculative group of gentlemen
representing the first families of Tinkletown. Among those present were:
Alf Reesling, the town drunkard; Harry Squires, the reporter; Ed
Higgins, the feed-store man; Justice of the Peace Robb; Elmer K. Pratt,
the photographer; Situate M. Jones; and two or three others of less
note. The shades of night had just descended; some of the gentlemen had
already yawned three or four times.

"There ain't no law against wearin' a veil," said the Marshal, reaching
out just in time to pluck a nice red apple before Lamson's clerk could
make up his mind to do what he had come out of the store expressly to
do--that is, to carry inside for the night the bushel basket containing,
among other things, a plainly printed placard informing the