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78 posure, sir. Afterward with Mees Cissie, who was hysterical. It was lunch-time before I descended to the servants' dining-room in the basement."

"Gerda, when was it that you first heard talk among the servants that there was something queer about these two deaths so close together?"

"Something queer, sir?" she repeated. "Do you mean that it might be a curse or fate or some strange mystery?"

Odell nodded.

"They were all discussing it when I entered the dining-room for lunch, sir; Peters and Marcelle, the cook, and Jane. They said it was not natural." She broke off with a shrug. "You must know the usual gossip of the—of our kind, sir. And it's not to be wondered at. Two deaths in a month in the same house and both from accident; it is enough to make anyone afraid to stay here."

She had retrieved her mistake but added another to it by too obviously straining for effect.

"You yourself did not take any stock in their superstitious fears, did you?" He deliberately adopted a more familiar tone, and she as instinctively withdrew from it.

"I felt uneasy, nervous, but I am not superstitious, sir."

"Then what made you feel uneasy?"

Again that little foreign shrug.

"I don't know, sir. Perhaps the gloom that hung over the house, the sorrow."

"Did you hear anything last night? Any sudden noise?"

"Yes, sir. I went to bed quite early, but I was still awake when I heard a faint crash far below. We sleep on the top floor, you know. This morning Peters told us of