He started violently when he saw her. Then he grinned.

“Looking for cards,” he said. “Jan and I want to play some gin-rummy.”

He showed her the cards, but Hilda held out her hand for them.

“I’ll take those,” she said. “My orders are that nothing is to leave this room.”

“Oh, have a heart. A pack of cards—”

“Give them to me, please. There are cards downstairs.”

He gave them up reluctantly.

“And what will you do with them?” he inquired.

“Put them back where they belong,” she said stiffly, “and lock this door.”

She waited until he had gone out. Then she locked the door and took the key.

At midnight the telegram came. Ida had not gone home. And Hilda, getting Marian some hot milk to enable her to sleep, found the servants still there, Maggie and William and, smoking a pipe by the door, Amos. They were, she thought, both worried and watchful. And Maggie was convinced that Ida was dead.

“She was a good girl,” she said tearfully. “A good Christian, too. And she minded her own business.”

Amos shook the ashes out of his pipe.

“Did she now?” he said. “Sure of that, are you? Then what was she doing in my place yesterday, after the old lady was killed?”

“You’re making that up.”

“Am I? I found her in my bedroom, looking out of the window. She was a snooper. That’s what she was. I never did trust her.”

“You never trusted anybody,” said Maggie scornfully. “What would she want in your room anyhow?”

“That’s what I asked her. She said she had brought me some blankets. I’ve been here thirty years and she’s been here ten. It’s the first time she’s been interested in my bed.”

He seemed to think that was humorous. He grinned, but Maggie eyed him disdainfully.

“You might at least be grateful.”

“Grateful? For blankets at the beginning of summer? Them blankets were an excuse to get in my room, and don’t tell me different.”

That night Hilda discovered why Susie had fainted a few days before.

Jan had sent her to bed, and she went gladly enough. All she wanted, she thought, was a hot bath and sleep, and tomorrow she could go home, to her bird and her sunny sitting-room. She had done all she could. She had not solved the murder, but she had solved one mystery. She locked the bit of paper from Ida’s room in her suitcase, got out a fresh nightgown, and after some hesitation put the key to Mrs. Fairbanks’s room under her pillow. Then she undressed and reached into the closet for her bedroom slippers. Curled up in one of them was something cold and clammy, and as she touched it it slithered out across her feet and under the bed.

She was too paralyzed to move for a moment. Then she put on her slippers and going across the hall rapped at Susie’s door. Susie was in bed, the usual cigarette in one hand, the usual lurid magazine in the other.