utton.

A Central Office man with a gold-badge showing, jerked the door open
and glanced out. He blinked sagely as he recognized the detective.

"All right!" said Drew. "Let me in!"

The door swung wider. Drew lunged through and turned. "What's new?" he
asked, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. "Are those servants still
under arrest?"

"Some of them, Inspector," grunted the Central Office man. "I can't
talk much. Fosdick gave me hell for talking to a newspaper man. He left
word, though, that you could come in."

"Thanks!" Drew said dryly. "Thanks! That's kind of him. You are holding
down this door?"

"Sure, Inspector! The butler and the second-man are down at
Headquarters. I don't like the job, but orders is orders."

Drew loosened his overcoat, removed his kid-gloves, stamped his
snow-covered shoes on the rug, and hurried past the library, where
stood a burly Central Office man on guard. He mounted the steps with
the running motion of a boy of fifteen. He glanced upward to where
velvet-soft light glowed at the entrance to Loris Stockbridge's suite
of rooms. Delaney stood framed in the opening. His huge bulk blotted
out the inner rooms. His face, seen in the high shadows, was long and
grim.

"She's in there," said the operative, raising his chin over his lifted
arm. "Miss Stockbridge is in there. She's with her maid--one Fosdick
tried to pinch--and Harry Nichols. She's got a notice by special
delivery, that the coffin she ordered from the Hardwood Casket Company,
of Jersey City, will be delivered to-morrow. She never ordered any
coffin, Chief. Ain't that dirt--to a girl like that? What d'ye think of
it?"

Drew's answer to Delaney's question was a grinding of teeth and a sharp
oath of defiance. He clutched the operative's arm in a nipping grip. He
led him into the tiny reception-hall of the suite.

The detective paused on the threshold of a larger room. He dropped his
hand from Delaney's arm. He stabbed sharp glances here and there about
the interior. He widened his eyes as they came to rest upon a further
doorway, which was hung with soft tapestries gathered to the side-walls
by cords of silk. Beyond this doorway, like the vista of some rare
painting, shone an inner light of a woman's shrine.

Silver and pearl and old rose blended into a bower such as is found in
palaces. Tiny medallions and plaques and miniatures--narrow framed
studies in oil--fans, vases, statuettes of ivory and rare china, a
hundred c