“How many people knew about that key, Miss Abbott?”

“I haven’t any idea. I suppose her maid knew. I did myself. But it was only the key to the panel in the wall. The safe itself had a combination lock.”

That, as I have said, was Friday. I managed to get Mr. Elliott on the library telephone and he agreed to come out the next afternoon. He had been calling every day about Maud, but he seemed surprised when I told him why she wanted him.

“A will?” he said. “Does she want to change the old one?”

It was my turn to be astonished. “I don’t know,” I told him. “She doesn’t want Tony to know she’s doing it.”

“She’s not cutting him out, is she?” he inquired dryly.

But when I told him of the elaborate preparations to keep his visit a secret he was silent for a full minute. “I don’t understand it,” he said at last. “I’ll do it, of course, but why all that nonsense? It isn’t like her.”

I told him she was not allowed visitors, at which he snorted. He agreed finally, however, and I rang off just as Tony sauntered into the room.

Perhaps I should explain here the elaborate telephone arrangement at the Cloisters. There were, of course, house phones everywhere. It was an old-fashioned system, with labeled buttons: Mrs. Wainwright, Mr. Wainwright, Housekeeper, Blue Guest Suite, Rose Guest Suite, Pantry, and so on. Also in practically every room of the house there was an outside telephone. These were on the same line, so that one could lift off the receiver almost anywhere and hear Mrs. Partridge ordering the day’s supplies, her high thin voice, always plaintive: “That last roast was short weight, Mr. Keeler. I put it on the scale myself. I do think—”

Only the library had its own outside connection. All our private talks took place over it, a fact which was to be important later on.

Tony was more cheerful that day. He came in whistling, accused me of having a lover to whom I had been talking, and proceeded to ring for a highball. Then he eyed me quizzically. “You look as though you’d been doing something you shouldn’t.”

I tried to look wistful and, if possible, frail. “I suppose I really need exercise. Air and exercise. I thought I might play some golf tomorrow afternoon. I’m not up to tennis.”

“Sure. Fine. Go to it.”

“I’ll see if I can find somebody. If not I’ll go around alone.”

Perhaps I rather overdid the pathos, for he laughed a little. “That’s a sad picture,” he said. “All right. I’ll take you on. Tomorrow at two-thirty, eh? And you’d better be good.”

I was thoughtful as I went back to my office. Why had Maud thought it necessary to lie to me? She already had a will. Tony must have known it. Certainly Dwight Elliott did. And I myself had no interest in it. So why?

It was too much for me. I played my worst possible golf that next afternoon, while Tony grew more and more cheerful. When at last I topped a ball and saw it roll twenty yards and stop I was ready to bite him. But he did not laugh.