k again and clean up. She liked to prepare little chafing-dish
dinners--but disliked the cleaning."

Dr. Blythe nodded significantly, as though that accounted for the reason
why it had seemed to be Leila who had called him in both times.

Kennedy and I had found the little pantry closet in the kitchenette
where the maid kept the few housekeeping utensils. He took a hasty
inventory of the slender stock, among which, for some reason, I noted a
bottle of a well-known brand of meat sauce, one of those dark-colored
appetizers, with a heavy, burnt-grain odor.

Craig's next move was to ransack the little escritoire in the corner of
the studio room itself. That was the work of but a few moments and
resulted in his finding a packet of letters in the single drawer.

He glanced over them hastily. Several of an intimately personal nature
were signed, "Arnold Faber." Faber, I knew, was a young art collector,
very wealthy and something more than a mere dilettante. Other letters
were of business dealings with well-known Fifth Avenue art galleries of
Pierre Jacot & Cie., quite natural in view of Miss Fleming's long
residence in France.

The letters had scarcely been replaced when the door of the studio
opened and I caught sight of a tastefully gowned young woman, quite
apparently a foreigner acclimated to New York.

"Oh, I beg pardon," she apologized. "I heard voices and thought perhaps
it was some of Rhoda's relatives from the West and that I could do
something."

"Good-evening, Miss Tourville," greeted Dr. Blythe, who was evidently
well-known to this colony of artists. A moment later he introduced us,
"This, by the way, is Miss Rita Tourville, an intimate friend of Miss
Fleming, who has the studio above."

We bowed, exchanged the conventional remarks that such a tragedy made
necessary, and Rita Tourville excused herself. Somehow or other,
however, I could not resist the impression that she had come in
purposely to see what was going on.

On our way out, after promising Dr. Blythe to meet him later in the
night at the office of the Coroner, Kennedy, instead of going directly
to the street, descended to the basement of the apartment and sought the
janitor, who lived there.

"I'd like very much to see the rubbish that has come down from Miss
Fleming's apartment," he asked, slipping into the janitor's hand a large
silver coin.

"It's all mixed up with rubbish from all the apartments on that side of
the house," replied the j