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Rh house another day? What had she meant in saying the aunt had had her way in spite of everything? Miss Meade did not look like the sort of person who could maintain her own way in the face of even the mildest opposition. And what had Miss Meade herself meant when she said, "I wish to heaven it had been you"?

It was unthinkable that she could have been referring to the recent deaths; no matter how sorely tried she was by her niece's willfulness such a thought would never have come to her. What, then, could have been the portent of that expressed wish?

He had turned the telephone-switch cutting off the extension and called Headquarters when Miss Meade glided into the room, laid a slip of paper on the stand beside him and went out again, closing the door behind her. Odell conferred with his captain and issued his preliminary orders, and then picking up the slip he glanced at the address and sent out a general alarm for the missing Peters.

This accomplished he emerged from the library to find Miss Meade waiting in the hall.

"How many servants do you employ?" he asked as he approached her.

"Four. Peters, Jane the housemaid, Gerda of whom I have already told you, and Marcelle the cook. Then there are the furnace man and the laundress, but they are not inmates of the house and know nothing of our affairs except the ordinary gossip below stairs," she replied. "Would you like to see any of them, Sergeant Odell?"

"Each of them in turn; but first will you show me Mrs. Lorne's boudoir?"