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88 to if it were not for me. No one keeping regular hours, no one eating." She turned to him and held out both hands. "I ask you, Monsieur, how one can take the sorrow when it comes, how one can bear the fear of he knows not what, if he have not the full stomach? Me, I am afraid, I tr-remble, I think I shall be the next that this so evil fiend which possesses this house shall take; but when I have eaten I say: 'If it comes, it comes. C'est tout. If it does not come, I give myself the great fear for nothing.

"There's philosophy in that," Odell conceded. "But I can't sit down and let it come to you all again, you know. I am here to find out if I can who this fiend of yours is, and I must have help. As you say, if it were not for you this house would be indeed upside down; and so I came to you. Tell me, Marcelle, what do you think of it all?"

"Me? I think much better of it since this morning. Monsieur." His crass flattery had had its effect, and Marcelle, the omelette forgotten, faced him with a good-natured smile and her fat arms akimbo. "Before, when Monsieur Julian was taken so soon after his mother, I say to myself: 'It is not good. It is not the will of the good God as Mademoiselle Meade try to tell me, nor is it accident which take two from the same family in so quick time. It is evil, and I do not know whether that evil be human or of the infernal spirits.' Now that I know it is human I am not so afraid. I wait only to catch him at his work!"

She made an eloquent gesture and was turning again to the table when Odell asked a hurried question.

"This is the tradesmen's door, is it not? The only back door?"