It was all very easy and very simple. Except that she didn’t leave.

For something was wrong with the car.

“Wrong with the car?” panted Miriam. “Why, you were driving it only this morning.”

“I know,” said Durrie sulkily. “The thing won’t start. I don’t know what’s wrong. You’ll have to wait till morning, I guess, Miss Dare. There’s only one night train in to Chicago. It leaves at six.”

“A taxi”—said Susan with stiff lips.

“Too late,” said Durrie, looking at his watch. “It’s five-thirty now and the roads are a fright. You can’t possibly make it.”

Miriam looked up from her embroidery hoops. “It looks as if you’ll have to spend another night with us, Miss Dare. We are very happy, indeed, to have you.”

Susan’s bag dropped and her heart with it. She had a sudden, sharp pang of longing for Jim. “Very well,” she said after a moment. “But—a theater engagement—I’ll telephone—”

There was an instant of complete silence. Then Miriam said, panting: “Show her the telephone, Durrie. It’s there in the hall, Miss Dare.”

They were listening, all of them, while she called Chicago and then a familiar number. But Jim was not there. “Will you give him a message, please,” Susan said. “Tell him Miss Dare can’t keep her engagement for the theater tonight. That she’s”—she hesitated and then made curious use of a conventional phrase. “Tell him,” she said, “that she’s unavoidably detained.”

But if they thought the use curious they did not say so.

Jim would understand her message; they had had no theater engagement. But there was no way of knowing when he would return and find it.

Was there anything really wrong with the car? And what would they say when they discovered that the little housemaid had gone home?

They said nothing of it. Nothing at all. The cook, enormous in a white apron, served the meal. What did they know? Somehow Susan managed to get food past a stricture in her throat.

Later they played parcheesi again.

“Tired, Miss Dare?” said Rosina once when Susan had glanced surreptitiously at her watch. And Miriam, holding dice in her fat, ringed hand, said:

“Are you perfectly sure you have nothing to tell us, Miss Dare? Your view of Uncle’s death, I mean? Does it coincide in every way with what we know of it?”

Susan had to speak without hesitation. “I’m afraid I’ve discovered nothing that wasn’t already known. But I’ll think it over carefully; sometimes it takes a little while for things to become clear in one’s mind.”

Miriam tossed the dice and Durrie took his turn. He said calmly: “Is that why you sent the girl away?”