“Don’t talk nonsense. What do you know about farming?”

“I could learn. And I like the country.”

There was enthusiasm in his voice. He even looked hopeful for a moment. But his mother shook her head. “This place will never be an apartment,” she said, putting down her napkin. “Not so long as I am alive, anyhow,” she added, and gave Susie a long, hard look.

Hilda watched her as she got up. Old she was, bitter and suspicious she might be, but there was nothing childish about her standing there, with her family about her. Even Susie, who had lit another cigarette and grinned at her mother-in-law’s hard stare, rose when the others did.

Hilda slept a few hours that afternoon. The house was quiet. Susie had gone to bed with a novel. Carlton had driven out in the car Amos had washed. Marian had—not too cheerfully—offered to drive with her mother. And Hilda, looking out her window, saw Janice cross the street to the doctor’s office and come out with him a few minutes later, to enter a shabby Ford and drive away.

When she had wakened and dressed she telephoned the inspector from the empty library.

“Any news?” she asked.

“I’ve got the report. Nothing doing. Your Noah’s ark is as pure as lilies. Anything new there?”

“No. Nothing.”

She hung up. There was a telephone extension in the pantry, and she did not want to commit herself. But she was uneasy. She did not think Maggie’s story had been pure hysteria. She put on her hat and went across the street to a small electrical shop. There she ordered a bell and batteries, with a long cord attached and a push button. It took some time to put together, and the electrician talked as he worked.

“You come from the Fairbankses’, don’t you?” he said. “I saw you coming out the driveway.”

“Yes. I’m looking after Mrs. Fairbanks.”

He grinned up at her.

“Seen the ghost yet?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“You’re lucky,” he said. “The help over there—they’re scared to death. Say all sorts, of things are going on.”

“They would,” said Hilda shortly.

She took her package and went back to the house. It was still quiet. The door to Mrs. Fairbanks’s room was open, but the closet containing the safe was locked. She shrugged and tried out her experiment. The push button she placed on the old lady’s bedside table. Then she carried the battery and bell out into the hall. To her relief the door closed over the cord.

After that she made a more careful inspection of the room than she had been able to make before. She examined the walls behind the pictures, lifted as much of the rug as she could move, tested the screens and bars at the windows again, even examined the tiles in the walls of the bathroom and the baseboards everywhere. In the end she gave up. The room was as impregnable as a fortress.