The inspector was exasperated.

“See here, Hilda,” he said. “This may be something or it may be nothing. But it looks damned queer to me. Her granddaughter was with her, and she says it’s true. She’ll call you pretty soon. I want you to take the case. Be a sport.”

Hilda looked desperately about her, at the covered birdcage, at her soft bed, and through the door to her small sitting-room with its chintz-covered chairs, its soft blue curtains, and its piles of unread magazines. She even felt her hair, which was still slightly damp.

“There are plenty of bats around this time of year,” she said. “Why shouldn’t she catch one?”

“Because there is no possible way for it to get in,” said the inspector. “Be a good girl, Hilda, and keep those blue eyes of yours open.”

She agreed finally, but without enthusiasm, and when a few minutes later a young and troubled voice called her over the telephone, she was already packing her suitcase. The girl was evidently following instructions.

“I’m telephoning for Doctor Brooke,” she said. “My grandmother isn’t well. I’m terribly sorry to call you so late, but I don’t think she ought to be alone tonight. Can you possibly come?”

“Is this the case Inspector Fuller telephoned about?”

The girl’s voice sounded constrained.

“Yes,” she said.

“All right. I’ll be there in an hour. Maybe less.”

Hilda thought she heard a sigh of relief.

“That’s splendid. It’s Mrs. Henry Fairbanks. The address is Ten Grove Avenue. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Hilda hung up and sat back on the edge of her bed. The name had startled her. So old Eliza Fairbanks was catching bats in towels, after years of dominating the social life of the city. Lady Fairbanks, they had called her in Hilda’s childhood, when the Henry Fairbanks place still had the last iron deer on its front lawn, and an iron fence around it to keep out hoi polloi. The deer was gone now, and so was Henry. Even the neighborhood had changed. It was filled with bleak boardinghouses, and a neighborhood market was on the opposite corner. But the big square house still stood in its own grounds surrounded by its fence, as though defiant of a changing neighborhood and a changing world.

She got up and began to dress. Perhaps in deference to her memories she put on her best suit and a new hat. Then, canary cage in one hand and suitcase in the other, she went down the stairs. At her landlady’s door she uncovered the cage. The bird was excited. He was hopping from perch to perch, but when he saw her he was quiet, looking at her with sharp, beadlike eyes.

“Be good, Dicky,” she said. “And mind you take your bath every day.”

The bird chirped and she re-covered him. She thought rather drearily that she lived vicariously a good many lives, but very little of her own, including Dicky’s. She left the cage, after her usual custom, with a card saying where she had gone. Then, letting herself quietly out of the house, she walked to the taxi stand at the corner. Jim Smith, who often drove her, touched his cap and took her suitcase.