“Murdered!” he said hoarsely. “I don’t understand. Not poison again?”

“She was stabbed. With a knife.”

He seemed still unable to take it in.

“I don’t understand,” he repeated. “Who would kill her? She hadn’t very long to live. And nobody hated her. Even the servants—”

He did not finish. He got up and went to the window.

“Is Jan all right?” he asked without turning.

“She’s worried, Mr. Garrison.”

He swung around.

“Worried! What do you mean, worried?”

“You were outside the house last night, and Mrs. Carlton Fairbanks knows it.”

“Susie! So it was Susie!” he said, and gave a short laugh. “She scared the insides out of me.”

“Jan thought you ought to know,” Hilda said patiently. “There may be trouble. The police have found a footprint. I imagine it’s yours. I promised to tell you before they got here—if they come at all. Susie won’t talk, but Amos might. He looked out the window. He may have recognized you.”

He began to see the seriousness of his situation. Yet his story was coherent and straightforward. He had had what he called a difference with Eileen, on Wednesday night. He had packed a bag and gone to his club, and on Saturday morning he had taken a plane to Washington.

“Things haven’t been very good,” he said. “I needed a job, and I thought with all this government housing I might get something. I happen to be an architect. But it was a Saturday, and summer”—he smiled—“the government doesn’t work on June week-ends.”

He had got back to the apartment late the night before to find Eileen gone and her suitcase missing. They had had to let the maid go, and he didn’t know what had happened to Eileen.

“I thought Jan might know,” he said. “But I didn’t want to telephone her and rouse the house. So I went over. It was one o’clock when I left there. I’ve done that before, talked to Jan at night, I mean. Her window was up, although it was raining cats and dogs, and I called to her. She said my wife was there, so I came back here.”

“Meeting Susie on the way?”

“Meeting Susie on the way,” he said, and smiled again. “She yelled like an Indian.”

She considered that. It might be true. She had an idea, however, that it was not all the truth.

“You didn’t go back again? To the house?” He looked at her oddly.

“See here,” he said. “What’s all this about? They don’t think I killed the old lady, do they?”

“Somebody killed her,” Hilda said dryly, and got up.

He saw her out, apologizing for the dust, the evident disorder. He owned the place. He couldn’t sell it, worse luck. Nobody could sell anything nowadays, even a tapestry. But she felt that behind all this, his confident manner, the composure on his good-looking face, his mind was far away, working hard and fast.

She was on a corner waiting for a bus when she saw the inspector’s car drive up to the door of the apartment building and two or three men get out. So Amos had talked, after all.