tor and hospital bills. Had
borrowed it or "gold-dug" it.... And in May she had been rich enough to
have $9,000 to invest!

"Lydia, you never forgave Nita Selim for ruining your life as well as
your face!" Dundee charged her suddenly.

"You're a liar!" she cried passionately. "I know what I felt. It's _my_
face and _my_ life, ain't it? I tell you I didn't even bear a grudge
against her--the poor little thing! Eating her heart out with sorrow for
what she'd done--till the very day of her death! Always trying to make
it up to me--paying me too much money for the handful of work I had to
do, what with her eating out nearly all the time and throwing away
stockings the minute they got a run in 'em--. Forgive her? I'd have
crawled from here to New York on my hands and knees for Nita Leigh!"

Dundee studied her horribly scarred face, made more horrible now by what
looked like genuine grief.

"Lydia, who was the man over whom your mistress wanted to commit
suicide?"

The single, tear-reddened eye glared at him suspiciously, then became
wary. "I don't know."

"Was it Dexter Sprague, Lydia?"

"Sprague?" She spat the name out contemptuously. "No! She didn't know
him then, except to speak to at the moving picture studio."

"When did he become her--lover, Lydia?" Dundee asked casually.

The woman stiffened, became menacingly hostile. "Who says he was her
lover? You can't trick me, Mr. Detective! I'd cut my tongue out before
I'd let you make me say one word against my poor girl!"

Dundee shrugged. He knew a stone wall when he ran up against one.

"Lydia," he began again, after a thoughtful pause, "I have proof that
Nita Selim was sure you had never forgiven her for the injury she did
you." His fingers touched the letter in his pocket--that incredible
"Last Will and Testament" which Nita had written the day before she was
murdered....

"And that's another lie!" the woman cried, shaking with anger. She
struggled to her feet, stood swaying dizzily a moment. "Come upstairs
with me to her room, and I'll show _you_ some proof that I had forgiven
her!... Come along, I tell you!... Trying to make me say _I_ killed my
poor girl, when I'd have died for her--Come on, I tell you!"

And Dundee, wondering, beginning to doubt his own conviction a
little--that conviction which had sprung full-grown out of Nita's
strange, informal will, and which had seemed to explain
everything--followed Lydia Carr from her basement room to the bedro