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120 the foot of the servants' staircase. She told me you were here, and I thought I'd report, as I've finished the job you gave me, all but Miss Meade's room and Mr. Lorne's and Mr. Gene's."

"How about Kelly and Smith?"

Taylor grinned once more.

"Kelly's down in the cellar diggin' in the coal for those tools you told him to find; he's looked everywhere else. Smith's down in the kitchen tryin' out his correspondence-school French on the cook. Gerda wouldn't give him a look!"

"Well, go and cultivate Jane, and see if you can get any dope out of her along the lines I told you this morning. Work on her fears and discount her imagination, and you'll soon have every detail of the past week from her point of view. I'm going now to have a little talk with Randall Chalmers."

As he went slowly up the back stairs Odell mentally listed the data which Taylor's search of the rooms had revealed. The most significant point seemed to be Gerda's strange aloofness not only from the other members of the household but from the world in general, and her efforts to efface all record of the past and render it as difficult as possible for her identity to be traced back farther than the day she had entered the house, as evidenced by her care in removing even the tabs from her clothing.

Yet she had willingly enough volunteered information that morning as to where she had worked previously, and it was improbable that the late Mrs. Lorne would have taken into her service, particularly in such an intimate position