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224 served that he laid aside the book as if not ill-pleased with the interruption. "Have you come to tell me that you have discovered the family Nemesis?"

"Scarcely that. I want to ask you precisely the same question which you put to me at our last interview." The detective smiled pleasantly. "What do you think of the maid, Gerda?"

Rannie's eyes narrowed.

"I thought we had dismissed Gerda from further discussion, but my opinion of her coincides with your own: I think she is a very superior sort of maid."

"You know as well as I do that she is far above the position which she has voluntarily assumed here." Odell was still smiling, but a peremptory note had crept into his tones. "But you know more than I; you know what her game is in this house."

Rannie threw back his head with a burst of ironic laughter.

"So one of your zealous sleuths was on the job this morning when I was kidding her, was he? I'm sorry to disappoint you, Sergeant; but I don't know any more than you do about her. She's just one of the army of reduced gentlewomen forced to earn their own living, unfitted for anything but a position of this sort, and too proud to play the game like a sport. It amuses me to take her down a peg now and then; that is all."

The detective advanced to the chair upon which Rannie had placed the book, and picking it up he seated himself and laid it carelessly on his knee.

"You told her that you would not give her away because you did not want the 'fun' spoiled; and you warned her