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word for that," he said, sullenly. a moment later he called me, tions," I told her. "You say Mrs. THURSDAY, JULY 7th, 1932 THE HAILEYBURIAN Page 7 FOURTH INSTALMENT . SYNOPSIS Six people, Horace Johnson (who tells the story) his wife, old Mrs. Dane, Herbert Robinson and his sister, Alice, and Dr. Sperry, friends and neighbors, are in the habit of holding weekly meet- ings. At one of them, Mrs. Dane, who is hostess, varies the program by un- expectedly arranging a_ spiritualistic sseance with Miss Jeremy, a friend o} Dr. Sperry and not a professional, as the medium. At the first sitting the medium tells the details of a murder as it is occur- ring. Later that night Sperry learns that a neighbor, Arthur Wells, has been shot mysteriously. With John- son he goes to the wells residence and they find confirmation of the medium's account. Mrs. Wells tells them her husband shot himself in a fit of de- pression. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY Believing then that something might possibly be hidden there, I made an investigation and could see some small objects lying there. Sperry brought me a stick fro mthe dressing roo mand with its aid succeeded in bringing out the two articles which were in- strumental in starting us on our brief but adventurous careers as private investigators. One wasa leather razor strop, old and stiff from disuse, and the other a wet bath sponge, now stained with blood to a yellowish brown. "She is lying, Sperry," I said. He fell somewhere else, and she dragged him to where he was found." : "But--why ?" "JT don't know,' I said impati- ently. "From some place where a man would be unlikely to kill himself, I daresay. No one ever killed himself, for instance, in an open hallway. Or stopped shav- ing; to ido, ity') 'We only have Miss Jeremy's Confound it, Horace, don't let's ting in that stuff if we can help : Wi, Cn ared at each other, with t Send sponge between us. Suddenly he turned on his heel and went back into the room, and quietly. ' "You're right," he said. "The poor devil wa sshaving. He had it half done. Come and look." But I did not go. There wasa carafe of water in the bathroom, and I took a drink from it. My hands were shaking. When I turned around I found Sperry in the hall, examining the carpet with his flash light, and now and then stooping to run his hand over the floor. "Nothing here," he said ina low tone, when I had joined him. "Ae least I haven't found any- thing." How much of Sperry's pro- ceeding with the carpet the gov- erness had seen I do not know. I glanced up and she was there, on the staircase to the third floor, watching us. She came down the stairs, a lean young Frenchwoman in a dark dressing gown, and Sperry suggested that she should haye an opiate. She seized at the idea, but Sperry did not go down at once for Hi$ professional bag. "You were not here when it oc- cured, "Madémoiselle ?" he en- quired. : / ' "No, doctor. I had been out -for a walk." She clasped her hands. "When I came back--" "Was he still on the floor of the dressing-room when you came in?" "But yes. Of course. She was alone. She could not lift him." "T see," Sperry said thought- fully. "No, I daresay she couldn't. Was the revolver on the floor 'also?." "Yes, doctor, I myself picked it up." To Sperry she showed, I ob- served, a slight deference, but when she glanced at. me, as she did after each reply, IT thought her expression slightly. altered. At the time this puzzled me, but it was explained when Sperry started down fhe stairs. h "Monsieur is of the police?" she asked, with )a Frenchwo-| man's timid respect for the con- stabulary. I hesitated before I answered, I am a truthful man, and I hate) unnecessary lying. But I ask consideration of the circumstan- ces. "Tam making a few investiga- MARY ROBER COPYRIGHT 1935/ 4 | SIGHT;UNSEEN Y TS RINEHART MARY ROBERTS RINEHART except for her husband?" "The children." "Mr. Wells was shaving, I be- lieve, when the--er--impulse ov- ertook him?" There was no doubt as to her surprise? "Shaving? I think not." "What sort of razor did he or- dinarily use?" "A safety razor always. At east I have never seen any oth- ers around." "There is a case of old-fashion- ed razors in the bathroom." She glanced toward the room and shrugged her shoulders. "Possibly he used others. I have not seen any." "It was you, I suppose cleaned up afterwards." "Cleaned up?" who "You who washed up the stains?" "Stains? Oh, no, monsieur. Nothing of the sort has been done yet." I felt that she was telling the truth, so far as she knew it, and I then asked about the revolver. "Do you know where Mr. Wells kept his revolver?" "When I first came it was the drawer of that table. I sug- gested that it be placed beyond the children's reach. I do not know where it was put." "Do you recall how you left the front door when you : went out? I mean, was it locked?" "No. The servants were out, and I knew there would be no one to admit me. I left it un- fastened." But it was evident that she had broken'a rule of the house by do- ing. so, for she added: "I am afraid to use the servant's en- trance. It is dark there." "The key is always hung on the nail when they are out?" "Yes, If any of them is out it is left there. There is only one key. The family is out a great deal, and it saves bringing some one down from the servant's rooms at the top of the house." But I think my knowledge of the key bothered her, for some reason. And as I read over my in gument that it can'tbe done, and as to the key--how do I know that my own back door key isn't hung outside on a nail some- times?" "We might look again for that hole in the ceiling." "T won't do it. Miss Jeremy has read of something of that sort, or heard of it, and stored it in her subconscious mind." But he glanced up at the ceil- ing nevertheless, and a moment later had drawn up a chair and stepped onto it, I did the same thing. We presented, I imagine, rather a strange picture, and I know that the presence of the rigid figure on the couch gave me a sort of gloutish feeling. The house was an old one and in the centre of the high ceiling a plastered ornament surrounded the chandelier. Our search grad- ually centered on this ornament, but the chairs were low and our long distance examination re- vealed nothing, It was at that time, too, that we heard some one in the lower, hall, and we had only a moment to put our chairs in place before the butler came in. He showed no surprise, but stood looking at the body on the couch, his thin face working. "I met the detectives outside, doctor," he said. "It's a terrible thing, sir, a terrible thing." "I'd keep the other servants out of this room, Hawkins." "Yes sir." He went over to the sheet, lifted the edge slowly, and then replaced it, and tip-toed to the door. "The others are not back yet. I'll admit them, and get them up quietly. How is Mrs. Wells?" "Sleeping," Sperry said briefly, and Hawkins went out. I realize now that Sperry was --I am sure he will forgive this --in a state of neves that night. For example, he d returned only an impatient silence to my douht / as to whether Hawkins had real- ' . ly only just returned and he quite missed something downstairs which I later proved to have an ba Sperry was on the floor, examining the carpet with his flashligut. case, important bearing on the questions, certainly they indicat- ed a suspicion that the situation was less simple than it appeared. She shot a quick glance at me. "Did you examine the revolver when you picked it up?" "J, monsieur? Non" Then her fears, whatever they were, got the best of her. "I know nothing but what I tell you. I was out. I can prove that is so. I went to a pharmacy; the clerk will remember. I know, monsieur, he will tell you that I used the telephone there." I told her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the pharmacy, and she muttered something about the children and went up the stairs. When Sperry came back with the opiate she was nowhere in sight, and he was considerably annoyed. "She knows something," I told him. "She is frightened." Sperry eyed me with half a frown. "Now see here, Horace," he said. "suppose we had come in here, without the thought of that seance behind us? We'd have accepted the thing as it appears to be, wouldn't we? There may be a dozen explanations for that sponge, and for the razor strop. t in heaven's name has a razor strop todo with it any- how? One bullet was fired, and the revolver has one empty chamber. It may not be the cus- Wells was alone in the house, tom to stop shaving in order to commit suicide, but that's no ar- This was when we were going out, and after Hawkins had op- ened the front door for us. It had been freezing hard, and Sperry, who had a bad ankle, looked about for a walking stick. He found one, and I saw Hawkins take a quick step forward and then stop with no expression whatever on his face. "This will answer, Hawkins.' , "Yes, sir," said Hawkins im- passively. And if I realize that Sperry was nervous that night, I also realize that he was fighting a battle quite his own, and with its personal problems. "She's got to quit this sort of thing," he said savagely and ap- ropos of nothing as we walked along. "It's hard on her, and be- sides 4 paesiti "She couldn't have learned about it," he said, following his own trail of thought. "My car brought her from her home to the house door. She was brought in to us at once. But don't you see that if there are other devel- opments, to prove her statements she--well she's as innocent as a child, but take Herbert, for in- stance. Do you suppose he'll be- lieve she had no outside informa- tion?" "But it was happening while we were shut in the drawing- room." "So Elinor claims. But if there was anything to hide, it would ert would jump on that." I said irritably to him. "I in- tend to go home, it is 1.30 in the morning." But as it happened I did not go into my house when I reached it. I was wide awake and I perceiv- ed, on looking up at my _ wife's window, that the lights were out. As it is her custom to wait up for me on those rare occasions when I spend an evening away from home, { surmised that she was comfortable asleep, and I made my way to the pharmacy to which the Wellses' governess had referred. The night clerk was in the pre- scription room behind the shop, He had fixed himself comfort- able on two chairs, with an old table cover over his knee and a half empty bottle of sarsaprilla on a wooden box beside him. He did not waken until I spoke to him. "Sorry to rouse you, Jim," I said. He flung off! the cover and jumped up, upsetting the bottle, which tickled a stale stream on the floor. "Oh, that's all right, Mr. Johnson, I" wasn't asleep, anyhow." I let that go and went at once to the object of our visit. Yes, he remembered the governess, knew er, as a matter of fact. The Wel- Ises' bought a good many things there. Asked as to her telephon- ing, he thought it was about nine o'clock, maybe earlier, But ques- tioned as to what she had tele- phoned about, he drew himself up. "Oh, see here," he said, "I can not very well tell you that, can I? This business has got ethics, all sorts of ethics." He enlarged on that. The sec- rets of the city, he maintained, loftily, were in the hands of the pharmacies. It was a trust that they kept. "Every trouble from dope to drink, and then some," he boasted. When I told him that Arthur Wells was dead his jaw dropped, but there was no more argument in him. He knew very well the number the governess had called. "She done it several times," he said, "I'll be frank with you, I got curious after the third even- ing, and called it myself. You know the trick. I found out it was the Ellingham house up State Street." "What was the nature of the conversations?" "Oh, she was very careful, It's' an open phone, and anyone could hear her. body was not to come. Another time she just said, 'This is Suz- anne Bautier, 9.30, please." "And tonight'." "That the family was going out--not to call." 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