. The strangest thing occurred.
She said it couldn't occur again in a thousand years, not even if she
tried to do it. Her left ear happened to stop not more than half an inch
from the keyhole. She just couldn't help hearing what Mrs. Smith said to
her maid. Angie says she said, plain as anything: 'You couldn't blame me
for sitting up all night, if you had to sleep in a thing like this.' She
didn't hear anything more, because she hates eavesdropping. Besides, she
thought she heard the maid walking toward the door. Now, what do you
make of that, Mr. Hawkshaw?"

"If you don't stop callin' me Hawkshaw, I'll--"

"I apologize. An acute case of lapsus lingua, Mr. Crow. But wasn't that
remark significant?"

"I am a friend of Mrs. Nixon's, an' I must decline to criticize her
beds," said Mr. Crow rather loftily. "I ain't ever slept in one of 'em,
but I'd do it any time before I'd set up all night."

"Granting that the bed was all right, then isn't it pretty clear that
she was referring to something else? The veil, for instance?"

"Sounds reasonable," said Newt Spratt, and then, after due
reflection,--"mighty reasonable."

"I'd hate to sleep in a veil," said Alf Reesling. "It's bad enough to
try to sleep with a mustard poultice on your jaw, like I did last winter
when I had that bad toothache. Doc Ellis says he never pulled a bigger
er a stubborner tooth in all his experience than--"

"I think you ought to investigate the Veiled Lady of Nixon Cottage,"
said Harry Squires, lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder.
"You can't tell what she's up to, Anderson. It wouldn't surprise me if
she's a woman with a past. She may be using that veil as a disguise.
What's more, there may be a price on her head. The country is full of
these female spies, working tooth and nail for Germany. Suppose she
should turn out to be that society woman the New York papers say the
Secret Service men are chasing all over the country and can't find--the
Baroness von Slipernitz."

"What fer kind of a dog is that you got, Ed?" inquired Mr. Crow, calmly
ignoring the suggestion.

Mr. Higgins' new dog was enjoying a short nap in the middle of the
sidewalk, after an apparently fatiguing effort to dislodge something in
the neighbourhood of his left ear.

"Well," began Ed, eyeing the dog doubtfully, "all I know about him is
that he's a black dog. My wife has been sizin' him up for a day or two,
figgerin' on having him clipped here and there to see