She checked herself abruptly, and Hilda thought the father had made a gesture. She got nothing further from them. They knew nothing of any bats or other creatures, and Hilda, watching their surprise, was sure that it was genuine. They sat in the old-fashioned parlor, with an organ in the corner and a fan of paper in the empty fireplace, and denied that Ida had ever carried anything of the sort into town. “Why would she?”

“Some laboratories buy such things,” Hilda said mendaciously, and got up. “Someone had been keeping things in a birdcage in the Fairbanks stable. Never mind. I’m only sorry. If there is anything I can do—”

Courtney had not gone into the house. He was standing by the car when she came out.

“Funny thing,” he said. “There was a boy over by the barn. I started over to him but he beat it. Well, how did they take it?”

“It’s broken them,” she said wearily. “I suppose it was the boy who did it.”

“Did what?”

“Caught the bats and so on and gave them to Ida.”

He almost put the car into a ditch.

“So that’s it,” he said. “It was Ida! But why, and who killed her?”

“Are you sure you don’t know, doctor? On the night Mrs. Fairbanks died you saw someone on the third floor, didn’t you? You were holding a cup of coffee. It spilled.”

He passed a truck before he replied.

“That’s as preposterous a deduction as I’ve ever heard,” he said. “If that’s the way the police work—”

“I’m not a policewoman,” she told him patiently. “You saw someone, didn’t you?”

“I’ve already said no.”

He was lying, and he was not a good liar. She did not pursue the subject. She was very quiet the rest of the way back to town. Her face had no longer its bland cherubic expression. She looked dispirited and half sick. When young Brooke politely but coldly offered her dinner at a roadhouse she refused it.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “Thanks just the same. I want to get back as soon as possible.”

Yet for a woman in a hurry she did nothing much when she reached the Fairbanks house again. She did not get into uniform. She merely took off her hat and sat down in her room. When Jan, on her way to bed, rapped at her door she was still there in the dark.

“Good gracious! “Jan said. “Don’t you want a light? And did you have anything to eat?”

“I didn’t want anything, Jan.”

“Just what were you and Courtney cooking up this afternoon?” Jan asked curiously. “I saw you, you know. You were gone for hours.”

“I was telling Ida’s people about her,” said Hilda. “It was rather sad. I hate to carry bad news.”

She looked at the girl. How would she bear another blow? Suppose she was right and Ida had been put out of the way because she knew what Hilda thought she knew?