So was the room. So were the
curtains. The room needed a dusting--a most thorough dusting. It had been
given a haphazard lick-and-a-promise cleanup not too long ago, but the
cleanup before that had been as desultory as the last, and without a
doubt the one before and the one before that had been of the same sort of
half-hearted cleaning. As a woman and a housekeeper, Mrs. Bagley found
the room a bit strange.

The furniture caught her eye first. A standard open bookcase, a low sofa,
a very low cocktail-type table. The chair she stood beside was standard
looking, so was the big easy chair opposite. Yet she felt large in the
room despite its old-fashioned high ceiling. There were several low
footstools in the room; ungraceful things that were obviously wooden
boxes covered with padding and leatherette. The straight chair beside her
had been lowered; the bottom rung between the legs was almost on the
floor.

She realized why she felt big. The furniture in the room had all been cut
down.

She continued to look. The strangeness continued to bother her and she
realized that there were no ash trays; there was none of the usual
clutter of things that a family drops in their tracks. It was a room
fashioned for a small person to live in but it wasn't lived-in.

The lack of hard cleanliness did not bother hervery much. There had been
an effort here, and the fact that this Charles Maxwell was hiring a
housekeeper was in itself a statement that the gentleman knew that he
needed one. It was odd, but it wasn't ominous.

She shook her daughter gently and said, "Come on, Martha. Let's take a
look at these girl-type toys."

James led them through a short hallway, turned left at the first door,
and then stood aside to give them a full view of the room. It was a
playroom for a girl. It was cleaner than the living room, and as--well,
untouched. It had been furnished with girl-toys that some catalog
"recommended as suitable for a girl of seven."

The profusion of toys overwhelmed little Martha. She stood just inside of
the door with her eyes wide, glancing back and forth. She took one slow
step forward, then another. Then she quickened. She moved through the
room looking, then putting out a slow, hesitant hand to touch very
gently. Tense, as if she were waiting for the warning not to touch,
Martha finally caressed the hair of a baby doll.

Mrs. Bagley smiled. "I'll have a time prying her loose from here," she
said.

James nodded h