“See here, Tony,” he said. “You must have some idea of what Bessie knew.”

“I haven’t. She may have thought I did.”

“So she locked herself up?”

“So she locked herself up,” said Tony, and got wearily out of the car.

I went back to the Cloisters that morning. Tony and Dwight Elliott were there, but I did not see them. I was glad I had gone, however. The morale of the entire staff was badly shattered. Mrs. Partridge had retired to her bed. In the kitchen Pierre had threatened the kitchen-maids with a knife and they had fled, screaming. The silver was unpolished, the ashes still in the grates, and a general air of uncertainty and demoralization permeated the entire place.

In the emergency I called the household together and gave them a plain-spoken talk. Do your work or pack and get out was the gist of it, and to my surprise it seemed to help them. They needed orders, and I was giving them. But anyone who without any authority has faced twenty-odd servants and read the riot act to them will know that I felt weak when it was over.

I remember that Pierre sent me a fat little quail on my lunch tray that day. I took it as it was meant, an overture toward peace, and I ate it, although the mere thought of food choked me.

Nobody could have told me then that we were close to the end of our mystery, or that Jim Conway was that day to receive a cable and set a trap. That a body in the city morgue was to play its own part in our solution. That I was to have a talk with Margery Stoddard late that very night. Or that only an hour or two after it I was to shoot O’Brien and nearly kill him.

I was busy that day. Rather than give up the Christmas party I called Dr. Leland and asked him if he would transfer it to the parish house. That meant gathering gifts and tree trimmings and sending them down in the station wagon. It made a number of trips, but at last the ballroom was clear. I went to the powder room to wash before I started for home. Mr. Elliott was in the west hall when I came out. He was as dapper as ever, but he looked tired. I asked him if I couldn’t order a drink for him.

“I think perhaps I will have one,” he said. “All this excitement—Better take one yourself, Miss Abbott. You look all in.”

“Aren’t we all?” I said.

We sat down by the fire in the library, and he told me something of Tony’s situation. He seemed worried, although his voice was as dry as usual. It didn’t look well for Tony, he said. The quarrel was bad. Then there was the question of the Buddha, and—

“What Buddha?”

My heart sank when he told me. I knew it well. It had stood on top of a cabinet in the Chinese room, where an angry man could find it ready to his hand. But I went down fighting.