Someone had used the ladder to gain entry to Stolz’s room. Had they succeeded? She rushed a second time to the zinnia bed and looked upward. What she could see reassured her. There was no indication that the sills had been prized, and she could see the locks in place on the crosspieces.

She felt a little calmer. Someone had tried to get in, but they hadn’t risked a forced entry. Sneak thief, she thought. She looked at the footprint in the earth and a sly, menacing figure seemed to build itself in the air above it. Mrs. Havermann shuddered, averting her eyes as from a living criminal, and then she went quickly back to the laundry room.

I can’t just go to pieces, she thought. I must go at this sensibly. She stood by the white enamel tubs and forced herself to consider, to think the situation through. The best and most obvious course was to go to the police and report an attempted burglary.

Would Stolz want her to do this? Somehow she thought not. She remembered vividly the scene in the library more than two years past—she and Stolz sharing a brandy, the room warmly lit, Stolz’s darkly handsome face looking at her over the brandy snifter, and his voice: “I’m going to ask a favor. Don’t be afraid to turn me down, Maude. I’d like to keep a bit of money here.”

She’d said promptly, a little coquettishly, “Well, why shouldn’t you?”

“Would it make you nervous?”

“I keep money in the house, Dan.”

“This might be much more than what you’re accustomed to having around. If I leave it here, shall it be our secret, yours and mine? I don’t have to warn you about careless talk.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday.” She had smiled at him, inwardly delighted. Not only at his trusting her so far but, as well, that the storing of money in her home made a kind of tie between them and a guarantee of his continuing visits.

“If anyone ever tries to question you——” A touch of sharpness in his glance; she noted it.

“I’d tell them nothing, never fear.”

His emphasis on caution and secrecy had impressed her. True, she had hinted about the money to Karen, but she quickly dismissed the memory. She was positive that Karen had too much honor and good sense to go babbling about it to outsiders.

She again thought of Stolz’s words: “. . . shall it be our secret, just yours and mine?”

He wouldn’t want her to call the police and explain about the money, she decided. At least, not yet.